Teaching Ideas For Fractions
For the first several years of elementary school, children learn to count, order, add and subtract with whole numbers. When faced with a fraction in second or third grade, they find that it is a totally different animal. To make matters worse, fractions are written in terms of familiar looking whole numbers, but the old ideas about whole numbers don't work anymore. For instance, 7 is bigger than 5 but 1/7 is not bigger than 1/5. Because fraction concepts are inherently difficult for children to grasp, teachers must take special care in introducing and teaching fractions.
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Concepts Before Operations
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It is important that children gain a good understanding of what fractions mean before they are taught to perform operations such as addition or multiplication with them. Many children can go through the mechanics of adding 7/8 to 2/5 without understanding that 7/8 is a number between 0 and 1 that is very close to 1, and that 2/5 is less than half. In the beginning the teaching of fractions should focus on helping children understand concepts such as the position of a fraction on the number line and equivalent fractions.
Manipulatives
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Manipulatives are essential in helping children understand fraction concepts. Circles, Cuisenaire rods, folded paper and different types of counters can be used to demonstrate fractions, their ordering and equivalence. Addition and subtraction of fractions can also be modeled at first using manipulatives before students are taught to do them with pencil and paper. Encourage them to demonstrate fractions by drawing them as segments of circles or rectangles. In addition to hands-on manipulatives, children can explore fractions using virtual manipulatives and fun fraction activities available online.
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Small Numbers
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Limit introductory lessons to fractions involving numbers below 12. Children have an intuitive sense of fractions involving small numbers, especially if they are presented in a familiar form such as pieces of pizza. Keeping numbers small will help students use this intuitive understanding to build a solid grasp of fraction concepts before they move on to operations and larger fractions. After some practice with small fractions, a student should be able to tell at a glance whether a fraction is greater or less than half or which of two fractions is closer to one.
Rules
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Teach children rules that they can use to compare and reduce fractions. But do this only after they have explored fractions for a while and developed a basic understanding of them. For example, a rule for comparing fractions with the same numerator can be that the fraction with the bigger denominator is smaller. A rule for reducing fractions can state that if the numerator and denominator are consecutive numbers the fraction cannot be reduced any further. When dealing with larger numbers, knowing divisibility rules can help in reducing fractions.
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References
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