Great Article here from Dr Bill Jenkins
- Make it visual. Use lots of visuals and manipulatives – paper cutouts, blocks, Legos®, pies – anything to help students visualize fractions.
- Make it reflective. When you tell a learner, “You’ve got three quarters of an hour to do this task,” push their understanding of the idea. In passing, ask them how many minutes that is in comparison to how many minutes there are in a whole hour. Little mental puzzles not only make for fun interactions, but challenge and extend understanding.
- Make it practical. Instead of using a pie chart, how about baking an actual pie? Working with recipes is a fun, hands-on way to teach and learn fractions. (And when it comes to motivating learners, don’t underestimate the value of a pizza; it makes fractions not only come alive, it makes them smell and taste delicious.)
- Make it ubiquitous. Fractions are truly everywhere: in the car, at the supermarket, at the hardware store. I challenge you to find a place where we go in daily life that fractions are NOT part of the environment. Look for fractions when you’re with young learners and call them out: “Hey, those sodas come in 12-packs. We only need half. How many is that?” The more they are exposed to them, the greater opportunity learners will have to absorb the concepts.
You can see the full article here
