Fractions

What is the best way to teach fractions to someone facing the material for the first time?

 

One of the challenges of teaching fractions is helping students understand that fractions are built upon whole numbers.
Along with understanding that fractions are built upon whole numbers, students should grasp that they can rewrite the values of fractions into multiple equivalent representations of the same number.
How many times have you heard, ''That's not fair, she has a bigger piece!''? This common protest is an excellent teachable moment to introduce fractions to your students. But simply telling them that a fraction is a part of a whole number isn't going to be enough, so what should you do?

A good strategy to introduce fractions is to connect to prior knowledge. In this strategy, you explain that we use fractions throughout our day, sometimes without realizing it! For example, ask students to think about dividing up a cake to understand what a fraction means.

There's one cake. We cut that cake into pieces or parts. We can describe how big our piece of cake is in relationship to the whole cake using a fraction. The fraction tells how many pieces we have out of all the pieces in the whole cake. In fractions, the pieces are usually the same size or cut into equal parts. This gives us an idea of how big our piece of cake is.

The denominator, or bottom number of the fraction, tells how many total equal parts we have. For example, if we cut the cake into 5 pieces, the denominator would be 5. After we have cut up the cake, we must decide how many pieces of the cake we want to give out. The number of pieces that we want to give out would be the numerator, or top half of the fraction. If we give out 2 pieces of the cake, for example, our fraction would be 2/5, because we gave out 2 pieces out of 5 possible pieces of cake.
Students have likely had experiences with fractions in their daily lives. Some students may have seen fractions on measuring cups or on a measuring tape. There are many children's books that explore the concept of fractions.

my tips:

Tip #1 - Explain every fraction in terms of pizzas to make fractions familiar.
Tip #2 - Explain the numerator and the denominator until every student understands.
Tip #3 - Draw lots of pictures of fractions.
Tip #4 - Ensure that you teach fraction simplification slowly and thoroughly.

 

This reply needs a second and perhaps a third read. I want to make sure my words are consistent with everything you said here.

 

Well in my school we do fraction pieces which is for a Montessori school so I honestly have no idea sorry

 

Fractions are easy to grasp and play with. I am not a teacher and can easily swim in an ocean of fractions.