Mastering 5th Grade Math Volume 1 Essentials of Fractions ~ Review

If your kids are struggling with math then you need to check out this easy-to-use math curriculum!

Disclosure: I received a free copy of this product for review, all opinions are 100% my own.

I've recently had the wonderful opportunity to review Mastering 5th Grade Math Volume 1 Essentials of Fractions by ScienceandMath.com.

ScienceandMath.com was created by Jason Gibson who began making science and math videos in 2004. Jason has a passion for teaching how science works with simple experiments you can do at home.

He also created a math program that teaches how and why we need math. Math is used heavily in science yet so many children in the public school systems are taught math for years without learning the connection until much later.

What we received

We were given the DVD edition of Mastering 5th Grade Math Volume 1 Essentials of Fractions - Video Course + Worksheets. The first DVD contains all the video lessons and the second disk has all the worksheets in PDF format for printing.  This DVD program is recommended for children in grades 4 to 6.

Table of Contents

• Lesson 1: Review of Fraction Concepts

• Lesson 2: Writing Fractions as Words

• Lesson 3: Finding Factors of Numbers

• Lesson 4: Finding the Greatest Common Factor

• Lesson 5: Finding the GCF of 3 Numbers

• Lesson 6: Prime Factorization

• Lesson 7: Equivalent Fractions

• Lesson 8: Renaming Fractions

• Lesson 9: Simplifying Fractions, Part 1

• Lesson 10: Simplifying Fractions, Part 2

• Lesson 11: Review of Improper Fractions

• Lesson 12: Review of Mixed Fractions

• Lesson 13: Writing Mixed Fractions as Improper Fractions

• Lesson 14: Writing Improper Fractions as Mixed Fractions

• Lesson 15: Thinking of Fractions as Division

• Lesson 16: Writing Whole Numbers as Fractions

How We Used Mastering 5th Grade Math Fractions

When I first received the DVD set I wanted to pre-watch some of the lessons to get a feel for the program. I was really impressed by the teacher Jason Gibson. He's very engaging and encouraging to students. I really liked that the lessons are geared to both visual and auditory learners.

As Jason works over the lesson he writes and draws out the information on the whiteboard using different colored markers. While doing this he also reads the notes out loud. I found this helped my children to remember the information better. It also helps if you have a struggling or slower reader.

I have been using this program with my 6th and 4th graders and my 3rd grader has been joining in a little too.  Most of the time we watch the DVD lessons on our TV since it's larger than the laptop screen it's easier for everyone to see the lessons.

Each video lesson is about 10 minutes long.  I'm usually nearby to answer any questions the children might have, although we've found the DVD does an excellent job of explaining things! I like that this frees me up to do other work at the same time. Often I can work with my younger children while the older kids work on their math lessons.

The second DVD that contains the PDF worksheets, I print out ahead of time. Each lesson has multiple worksheets starting with an easy one and then getting a little more complex as each sheet goes on.

I have all of my older kids work on the first worksheet. For some, it's a review and for others, it's the first formal introduction to this topic. The older children I have also do the additional worksheets at a deeper level.

I really love that the worksheets are in colour but simple and not overwhelmingly busy. The colour helps the children to focus and see the differences in the fractions, yet having just a few questions on each worksheet makes the page easier to focus on and not "scary" for children who might not be math lovers.

Other Volumes in the 5th Grade Math series are:

Volume 2 Add and Subtract Fractions Video Course + Worksheets ~ Adding and subtracting fractions, mixed numbers, word problems, and more.

Volume 3 Multiply and Divide Fractions - Video Course + Worksheets ~ Multiplying and dividing fractions, mixed numbers, word problems, and more.

Volume 4 Multiplication and Long Division - Video Course + Worksheets ~ Order of operations, decimals, multiplication, long division, and more.

I've been very impressed with how this program teaches later elementary math and I'm hoping to add their other volumes to our teaching resource!