Intro to equivalent fractions

The next lesson explored equivalent fractions in more detail.

I started with the context of a picnic and said - imagine you are on a picnic with a friend so there are 2 of you altogether. You have a variety of food such as apples, pizza, cake and a chocolate bar. How many ways can you share the food equally between 2 people?

To begin with, the children came up with halving in different ways - e.g. diagonally or horizontally. We discussed these ideas. One chid then used the context of a chocolate bar and said "What if there were 8 squares of chocolate though?" We then talked about each child getting 4 pieces, or 4 out of 8 (4/8) - discussed that this was still half.

I then modeled more examples using 1/4 - there are 4 people on the picnic. The children were starting to see relationships and got the idea that the denominators would all have to be in the 4 x table. I set them off with the Numicon or any concrete resources they wanted to use and this is what they came up with:

The next day, one of the children came in with these sheets that they had completed! She really understood the link between equivalent fractions and times tables. This activity then leads really nicely into the equivalent fractions posters.