Share a Pizza

Explicit Instruction/Teacher modeling

• Introduce the activity by explaining that today students will work with a partner to divide one whole pizza in half, so that each partner has an equal part, or amount of pizza, with their favorite topping.
• Return to the example of sharing the pizza with a friend. Ask students which ingredients would go on the whole, or entire, pizza. Write "whole pizza" and list sauce and cheese.
• Tell students to be careful, because whole with a "w" is different from the word hole, which means an opening. Whole means all in one piece, or not divided. For example, "I ate the whole bowl of ice cream. I ate all of it."
• Display the pineapple and anchovies Pizza Topping cards, and instruct students to turn and talk to a partner to name other pizza toppings.
• Remind students that it is possible to order pizza with one half of one topping and one half of another topping. One half means that one of two equal parts has one topping.
• Write "half pizza" and list student ideas for toppings that could be put on half the pizza.
• Return to the example problem. Choose a student volunteer to come up and divide the pizza in half, so you and your friend each get an equal amount of pizza.
• Say, "The whole pizza will have sauce and cheese. Half of the pizza will have pinapple, and half of the pizza will have anchovies."
• Model drawing tiny fish on the anchovy half, and triangles on the pineapple half.
• Display Vocabulary Cards, and have students add terms to the Glossary (optional).

Guided Practice

• Ask students to share their favorite pizza toppings, and display Pizza Topping cards as students suggest these toppings.
• Distribute individal white boards and dry erase markers or scratch paper to students.
• Use student responses to tell story problems. For example, "Jenni wants mushrooms, and Dylan wants black olives. How can they divide the pizza equally?"
• Direct students to draw a circle and divide it into two equal pieces, or halves. Draw small circles for olives on one half, and triangles with circles on top for mushrooms on the other half.
• Display the sentence frame, "The pizza has ____ on one half, and ____ on the other half."
• Tell students to use the sentence frame to describe the pizza to a partner.
• Tell another story problem. Say, "Junie and Carlos both want peppers. What would the pizza look like?"
• Have students sketch the pizza on their whiteboard, drawing small, curved lines to show peppers. Display the sentence frame, "The whole pizza has ____ ." Then, have students use the sentence frame to describe the pizza to a partner.
• Ask students if they have seen pizza in the shape of a rectangle, such as those served in school cafeterias.
• Model drawing a rectangle on the board, and have students draw them on their whiteboards. Pose story problems to the students, guiding them to divide a rectangle horizontally, vertically, and diagonally to create equal shares of pizza.

Group work time

• Put students in pairs and have them discuss their favorite pizza topics using the sentence frame, "I like ____ and ____ on my pizza."
• Ask students whether they want to order a circular or rectangular pizza. Give each student the Pizza Template, or a paper plate, to create a pizza. Students can draw toppings, or color and cut out toppings from the Pizza Toppings cards.
• Tell students to imagine that the whole pizza already has sauce and cheese. They should divide the pizza in half, and draw or glue their favorite toppings on each half of the pizza.