Learning Fractions With Fun Fraction Games
As I’ve mentioned, fractions are confusing and are often the first conceptually abstract math kids experience. Kids don’t even need to have learning differences to struggle with fractions, they are confusing all on their own. To complicate things, schools and teachers often do a haphazard job of teaching fractions as well.
In my tutoring, I’ve seen textbooks completely ignore essential fraction concepts. The book will teach fractions step-by-step right up to that critical point and then gloss over major concepts like equivalents, reducing and borrowing in subtraction (which for fractions is different than ‘normal’ subtraction’). In addition, having corresponded with several math teachers, there are teachers who are coasting and phoning it in due to burnout or other issues. I once asked a math teacher to explain the math theory for cross canceling in fractions* only to be met with silence followed by a grudging “I’ll have to look that up.” It’s no wonder kids are confused!
So what can you do to help? Buy a set of these fraction cards. They are only $7.99 and you will get lots of use out of them.
When I first introduce these cards to my students, I have them sort and find all the equivalents to familiarize themselves with the deck and to help them relate a picture to the numerical fraction. This is great for visual learners and will really help them ’see’ fraction relationships.
Depending on how they’ve sorted the deck, I then go through and point on that 2/6 is the same as 1/3 using the pictures so that they realize there’s more than one equivalent for each fraction.
Then we play Fraction War which requires the student to determine which fraction is larger. Fraction War helps solidify fraction relationships in their mind. From there, we graduate to fraction rummy. Rummy in of itself is not a terribly exciting game for me, but the fraction cards really make me (and my students) think.
For advanced students (i.e. those that consistently beat me in Fraction Rummy), I split the deck into 2 piles and we draw a card from each to create a random addition, subtraction, multiplication or division problem–whichever operation we decide to work on. Sometimes we end up with an unsolvable problem, which throws students and really works their critical thinking skills.
That’s several fraction games for kids for less than $10. Plus,the fact that it’s a game eliminates tension and worksheet angst.
*By the way, I’m still looking for an answer to that question so…if you happen to know, please leave a comment!
Tags: fraction games for kids, fun fraction games, learning fractions, math homework help, teach fractions
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January 18th, 2010 at 4:53 am
Well, there’s a few ways of justifying cross canceling, which is really just a way to speed up the process.
If you already agree that (a/b)*(c/d) = (a*c)/(b*d), then from there you know that (a*c)/(b*d) = (c*a)/(b*d) = (c/b)*(a/d), and then the cancellation is done inside the rearranged fractions, not across fractions.
Maybe a better way to put it is that you know that if some number divides another, say x divides y, then x divides any multiple of y. So if you’re multiplying two fractions, a/b and c/d, and a and d are both divisible by some common factor f, then f will divide a*c and divide b*d, so you can cancel it out sooner, rather than later.
I’m afraid neither of those explanations are particularly intuitive though.
June 10th, 2010 at 11:02 am
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