Fractions are not only a key part of the National Curriculum, but it is a fundamental part of being numerate.
As always simple concepts can be the most difficult for children to grasp.
- Physical examples
Pupils can understand real-life physical examples much better than abstract ones.
So don’t only use the pizza/cake idea but use toys in the room and our old favourite Lego. Lego is great for fractions (statistics, hand to eye co-ordination,…).
Make a block of Lego with different colours and pieces. How many parts are there? How many are red? How many are roughly cuboids? How might we represent this with numbers? If the block was twice as big, how many red pieces would there be?
- Relate to shapes and colour
If you don’t have enough Lego to share around, use images. get your children to draw a regular quadrilateral on a piece of paper and divide into different colours. You can even use a line bar.
Circles can be great (a bit too much like a cake/pizza model) but …..
- Embrace technology
Take advantage of technology!
There are plenty of reasons why you should use computers and tablets to help you teach in class: to help practise a subject again and again, gamify the learning so the students have to figure it out themselves, reduce marking workload, improve student engagement with the subject, allow students to get instantaneous feedback,….
All being said, Fractions with Emile, is a great way to practise and engage your students with fractions. 15 minutes a week will lead to huge strides in understanding, fluency and mastery.
