Year 3 - Practical fractions

Ask any teacher which area of Maths they dread the most and they will usually reply with the word that starts with ‘f-’ and ends with ‘-ractions’. Yes, fractions are a very abstract yet very useful concept to be taught.

Our adventurous Year 3s embarked upon learning fractions of amounts this week. It was time to get practical and start working together to solve puzzling maths problems. Wow, did they rise to the challenge, finding and dividing groups of equipment around the class with a flurry of excitement as these mathematician magicians ever grow in confidence.

Once we have divided sets of pencils, books, paints, toys, buttons, chairs and humans, my favourite question was asked: “Can we do this outside?”

“Yes”.

So we explored fractions in nature itself, dividing so well that even Fibonacci himself would be impressed!