Adding Fractions for Elementary School

This week, I wanted to focus on how to add fractions. Since I focused on how to identify and explain fractions for third grade last week, this felt like the next step. Additionally, after reviewing fractions, I still feel like I need refreshers on how to add, subtract, multiply and divide fractions in an efficient way. I also think that teaching these topics to students can be very difficult if you don't spend time figuring out the most simple and straightforward way to explain the steps. I used the K5 learning website again, which I also used last week to help me identify fractions. I came across this worksheet - which really helped refresh the fraction/addition process for me, and thought it would be helpful for my fellow classmates to use!

This sheet has problem sets that are quite simple because the denominators are all the same, but it is a good stepping stone to just get students comfortable with adding fractions in general. For example, in the second problem, you can simply add the two numerators, put it over the denominator that is already there. So, 1+1=2, and the denominator is 3, so the answer would be 2/3. This is simple and straightforward addition.

When thinking about how to explain this to students, I tried practicing with my preschoolers again. While they don't understand how fractions, they do know and understand numbers and how to count. So, what we did on a white board was draw a box and split it into three sections. Then we drew another box and again, split it into three sections. For each box, we colored in one section each, to represent 1/3. When I asked my preschoolers to count how many sections were colored in, they correctly said "Two, Miss Prianka!" Then I asked them to count how many sections we had split the box into, and they correctly said three. While they didn't understanding what 2/3 meant, they still were able to use this method to figure out what the answer was (even if they didn't realize they were adding fractions through this process!).

Identifying Fractions for Third Grade

As my first topic, I wanted to go over how to identify fractions. I recently was helping my niece with her math homework - which included work on identifying and adding fractions, and I realized that I need to review how to teach this to a student in a more efficient way.

I came across this page: https://www.k5learning.com/free-math-worksheets/third-grade-3/fractions-and-decimals/identify-fractions-color, which provides really great worksheets to identify fractions. For example, if there is the fraction is 3/5, there will be five blocks, and the student will be asked to fill in or color in 3 of those blocks and leave the remaining two blocks uncolored. This way, they can begin to identify what a fraction such as 3/5 looks like.

See below for a snapshot of the worksheet:

The worksheet looks like this once it is filled out:

My goal in identifying fractions was to figure out a way to better teach this topic to young students. I tried this with my preschoolers - how are much younger than the age group I would actually teach this topic to. However, it worked! What I realized is identifying fractions is just about counting - and if you can count, you can most likely identify a the beginning steps of a fraction. While adding, subtracting, multiplying and dividing fractions is much more complicated, my preschoolers were able to at least count out "3" and fill in 3 blocks, and leave 2 blocks uncolored. In this way, they too began identifying fractions (which is something that is introduced to most students in third grade!).

In my next blog post, I hope to re-teach myself how to easily add, subtract, multiply and divide fractions. For now, I'm glad I found a simple way to educate students on how to identify fractions using a visual method.