Making sense of adding unlike fractions

Here is an account of a class in which this problem was tackled by students who had understood the need/reason for fractions to be of the same size i.e., to have the same denominators so as to be able to add them easily. However, they had not yet arrived at any particular method to achieve this. This account is written by Rupesh Gesota, an engineer- turned-school-maths teacher. Check the 'Teacher's Blog' sub-page of the website www.supportmentor.weebly.com - in which this account. was first published- to know more about his adventures in teaching math. Given below is the description of the class in Rupesh’s words