Fraction Mash Activity 1: Quick Intro: Face Mashup

Exploring Numerators and Denominators in Fractions

Activity Prompt

Intro: Have you ever seen funny photographs where faces are combined to create a mashup?(Display examples like these: http://aplus.com/a/celebrity-face-mashups) In this activity, you will create some face mashups by taking pictures of you and your friends then experimenting with the fractional components for different mashups. Face Mashup Challenge: Make 4 mashups using the same two faces, yours and a friend’s. Start with the simple denominator of 4, and then create three more mashups using 9, 16 and 25.

To Do:

Face Mashup Challenge (20 minutes):
Have students open the app, and select “Make A Mashup.” To start, students need to choose two pictures to mash, adjusting them so that the eyes and mouths line up for the best mashups.

• Students can import from the camera roll or take new pictures.
• Suggest that students turn on the Overlay feature while taking a new photo to help them line up their shot.
• To adjust individual photos in the frames, students can use two fingers to zoom or rotate.
• Have students experiment with choosing parts and selecting Combine to check to see if their photos line up. In Create mode, have students make four mashups with the same two pictures, moving from simple to more complex:
• Have students set the denominator to 4 and create a mashup. Then save the mashup to the camera roll by selecting the send icon on upper right part of the screen.
• Repeat using denominators 9, 16 and 25, and make sure they save each mashup.

Discussion Prompt

students to describe their mashups and the decisions they made. Encourage students to think about howchanging the denominator affected their mashups.

Ask:

• How did Fraction Mash help you create your most satisfying mashup?
• What denominator did it use?
• Which denominators gave you the most satisfying effects? Why?

Examples of language and discourse to listen for as students engage with Fraction Mash:

• “The larger denominator gives me more parts, but they’re smaller.”
• “1/2 is a larger part than 1/9 so…”
• “All the denominators we used were square numbers. They used the same number of pieces across as up and down.”
• Other statements about ways in which increasing or decreasing denominators helped to achieve the result they were after.

Fraction Mash Quick Intro Activity:

Create some face mashups by taking pictures of you and your friends then experimenting with the fractional components for different mashups.

To Do:

1. Take two new pictures, or use pictures from your camera roll. Re-size the pictures by pinching to line up features like eyes and mouths.

2. Start with a denominator of 4. Choose the parts on the left picture that you want to mash up with the unselected parts of the right picture. Select Combine.

3. Go back and forth between creating and combining until you achieve mashups that you’re happy with. Do this three more times for the following denominators: 9, 16, 25.

4. Save your best mashups and prepare to discuss (using mathematical language) what you did to achieve the best effects.

Fraction Mash Quick Intro Activity: Face Mashup

Reflection Questions:

1. As you created mashups and changed the denominator, what did you notice? Did you find a denominator worked best? Why?

2. Try this challenge again with the custom grid and increase the rows and columns to 15 x 15, resulting in 225 for a denominator. How does this affect your ability to create the result that you think works best?

App Features You Will Use

In Create Mode, you will use:
	Swipe right to increase or left to decrease the numerators and denominators. This controls how many parts are in your mashup and how big they are.
	Import or take a new picture.
	(Visible when you choose to take a new photo) Turn the grid on/off.
	(Visible when you choose to take a new photo) View a semi-transparent overlay of the other picture.
	Change grid options to slice the picture the way you want. Custom allows you to choose how many parts as the number of rows times the number of columns.
In Combine Mode, you can use:
	View the equation that expresses the sum of the mashup.
	Turn on/off an effect that blends images.