Fun With Fractions: How to Help Your Students Love Learning About Fractions

Is it possible to go from “I don’t get this,” to “Can we learn more about fractions today?!” Fractions don’t have to be boring! By helping our students understand where fractions are used in real-life and giving them opportunities to be successful, we can transform learning about fractions from boring to fun!

We Like What We’re Good At

It’s understandable that we spend more time doing things we enjoy. It also makes sense that we perform better at the things we have more experience with. Therefore, we end up getting more experience with things we enjoy and are already confident with.

It takes real effort to give time and energy to things we struggle with or are not interested in. When we perceive ourselves as not a “(insert hard thing here)” person, this becomes even more difficult. Many students dread or shut down during math time because they don’t feel like they are a “math person.” But we can change this by giving them the experience they need to feel comfortable and confident.

Fractions in Real Life

Finding fractions in real life is a great first step toward a positive relationship with fractions. They are all around us! Try having a whole class discussion about where fractions can be found in real life. Think about:

  • measuring cups while cooking
  • half a basketball court
  • quarters of an hour on a clock
  • discounts (ex. half price) while shopping
  • the fuel gauge on a vehicle

How many examples of fractions in real life can your class find?

Related: “Why Do We Have to Learn This?” Boosting Engagement With Real-Life Math

 Other Fun Activities to Make Fractions Relevant

Your Age In Fractions

Help students calculate their age as a fraction. Most kids can tell you they are eight and a half. What does that really mean? Can they figure out their age in twelfths?

To help students visualize their age as twelfths, have them draw a simple clock. Write each month of the year next to each number on the clock, starting with their birth month at 12. In the example below, Risa was born in March, so she wrote March above the 12, followed by April, May, and so on. In March, Risa turned 8, but in May, Risa can say she’s eight and two-twelfths!

By helping students relate fractions to themselves in a fun and personal way, we can encourage them to feel more comfortable and confident.

Explore with Fractions

The value of learning through exploration is sometimes forgotten as students get older and as we push ourselves to “cover the curriculum” before the end of the year. But what good is covering the curriculum if it’s not also understood? Allowing students time to play with fractions in several different ways can give them the low-risk experiences they need to build understanding and familiarity before they begin learning more difficult concepts.

Try providing students with measuring cups and rice to explore fractions. How many fourths are in one-half? How many halves are in one whole? This makes fractions visual and real, rather than abstract.

Students can also explore fractions with manipulatives such as Lego, base ten blocks, bingo chips, pattern blocks, geoboards, grid paper, etc. What other materials do you have in your classroom that students could use to represent fractions?

Fractions In Sports

If you have some sports lovers in your classroom, this can be a great opportunity to incorporate some high-interest activities. Have your students brainstorm ways that fractions can be related to sports.

  • Look at stats from a recent game. What fraction of the goals/runs/touchdowns/baskets were scored by each team?
  • What fraction of the players on a team are rookies?
  • What fraction of the teams in the league are from Canada? What fraction of the teams are from the USA?
  • If it’s an Olympic year, what fraction of the medals were won by each country?

Talking About Fractions

Encourage students to be curious as they play and work with fractions. Ask students to share what they notice or what patterns they observe as they are working with different manipulatives. Ask open-ended questions like:

  • “What do you notice?”
  • “What fractions do you see?”
  • “What happens if you put these together?”
  • “How many different fractions can you make?”

Sentence starters like the ones shown below can provide an opportunity for students to be flexible in their thinking and discuss their strategies and thinking with the class.

What Do You Know About Fractions?

An informal assessment can be as easy as asking students to tell you everything they know about a topic. If you asked your students to tell you everything they know about fractions, what would they say? To do this, you can give each student a sticky note and have them each write something they know. Or give students a blank sheet of paper and ask them to fill it with things they know about fractions. {Download this template for free HERE.}

Practice Often

If possible, continue to work with fractions throughout the year instead of for one month while you focus on the fractions unit in your math curriculum. Daily fraction practice can help continue to reinforce important fraction concepts even after you move on to another math unit. Focus on seeing fractions in many different ways, for example, on a number line, as objects in a set, or as parts of a whole.

Mystery Fractions are another engaging way to reinforce fraction concepts daily. Some teachers like to use these as a warm-up at the beginning of class, while others assign them digitally as a task for the day.

Another great way to help students build their fraction understanding is to allow students to work independently at their own pace. This way students are always appropriately challenged and moving along at a pace that works for them. The Fraction Station can be used in addition to your regular curriculum to allow students to practice working with fractions at their own pace.

Help Students Connect Concrete Experiences to More Abstract Experiences

When exploring with fractions, it’s essential to help students make connections between concrete experiences and more abstract representations. We can help students build these connections by having them represent fractions in many different ways. For example, when exploring fractions with blocks, focus on how they can be represented in different ways including as written fractions (abstract). More information on using the Concrete Representational Abstract Model for teaching math can be found HERE.

I hope this post has helped you brainstorm ways that you can make fractions fun and relevant in your classroom! I’d love to hear how you make fractions meaningful for your students! Leave your ideas in the comments below

2 Comments

  • Excellent ideas all of them , Shelley! Thank you so much for them. I loved the idea of using the clock to demonstrate fractions.

    Reply

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