Fractions launch lesson

This is a lesson to launch fractions in Year 4.

It was differentiated to that the less able children had to look at 1/2 and 1/4. The middles had 1/5 and 1/10 and the more able had 1/3 and 1/6. (I chose these denominators to link to the times tables we had explored so far this year.)

The lesson was in two halves - first of all, the children came into the room and had to draw the first thing that came into their head (on the big white board) when they thought of a fraction. We then discussed these ideas and came up with key vocab such as equal (we explored this with pictures), divide, numerator and denominator. The children were able to tell me that the numerator was parts of a whole and the denominator was number of parts.

They then had to work in groups to represent the two fractions they had been given on the pieces of flipchart paper. You can see this below:

The second part of the lesson involved the children getting the sheets that I had placed in a tray on each table. Unbeknown to the children, these sheets were the equivalent fractions of the ones they had just explored. I then went round the room questioning the children and asking if they noticed anything about the two sheets. It was great at this point to see children using all they've learnt so far and drawing arrays etc to help them.

I had also given them these strips below so they could 'discover' the equivalent fractions:

At the end we explored what the children discovered :)