Fractions Made Easy

Today's Math topic will be on...you guessed it: Fractions! Fractions for me have always been a perplexing concept in Math. The way I understood fractions is by its decimal counterpart --not the actual concept of fractions. For example, I had never understood the meaning behind the numerator and denominator and what those numbers actually represented. As such, I only learned three main fractions such as 1/2 or 3/4 and I understood that only as half and quarters, but nothing more. Further fractions were represented in circles, but I never understood why we couldn't use other shapes to illustrate fractions. After all, not everything in the real world that needs to be split is in a shape of a circle!

So, in today's class we were introduced to other ways of     thinking about fractions and illustrating how fractions are split up! One of the ways that we examined was using rectangles and this method really clicked with me! I have drawn a picture below that illustrates using fractions with rectangles. For me by using this method I can actually see what the numerator number represents and what the denominator represents!

My next Aha Moment in class was learning about equivalent fractions because I used the rectangle representations to establish a quantity relationship between equivalent fractions. Through this illustrations I can understand that although these are different fractions they are representative of the same part of a whole. Truthfully, I do not think I had ever learned fractions in a way that just clicks, and I found myself thinking "Oh well that's easy!"

Fractions in the real world!
What is interesting is prior to attending
Thursday's class. On Wednesday I was in placement and one of the Math teachers was teaching a lesson on fractions. She was using sales as a way to explain fractions to her students. Sales is a part of every day life, so it is an effective approach to engaging students. She used copies of sales ads from various stores such as clothing stores, food or video games. And she divided her students into groups and asked them to calculate how much an item is worth if they applied the discount. She also transitioned from fractions to decimals in this lesson. I thought it was a very interesting less because the students seemed to enjoy it and make connections with the concept of fractions and apply it to the real world.

After today's class I searched online for other resources that I can utilize in a Math class to enhance students understanding of Fractions. This first resource (click on Harcourt image below) is an interactive program that allows for students to understand fractions and equivalent fractions using a ruler. This can be used in lesson to explain fractions in an interactive way. The next resource is called Fractions Jeopardy which can be used to play with the whole class. The class can be divided into teams and teams take turns choosing a category and the value. I think this would be a very interactive game for a class; categories are divided into adding, multiplying, dividing and subtracting fractions. I think this would be an interesting activity to try out in a Math class and see how students respond to it.

                                     

Harcourt School 

Fractions Jeopardy