News from the 3/4 Team...

Fractions, Decimals and Percentages!

It’s been a fun-filled start to Maths for the term, with Year 3 and 4 students focussing on Fractions, Decimals and Percentages.

Students have played warm up games and participated in open-ended activities and targeted mini-groups, aimed at engaging all students at their point of need.

 

Through exploration, students have been learning:

  • that fractions are even parts of a whole, created through sharing or dividing
  • how to recognise and interpret common uses of halves and quarters of shapes and collections
  • how to model and represent unit fractions including 1/2, 1/4, 1/3, 1/5 and their multiples to a complete whole
  • that percentages and decimals are other forms of fractions

 

Fraction Name Challenge

 

Using fractions, can you represent your name using the following criteria?

  • How many letters are in your first and last name?
  • How many of your letters are vowels and consonants?
  • Are any letters repeated? How does this impact the fractions?

Here is Abby's!

 

Try the activity for yourself.

You could even use other words, phrases or sentences... perhaps a book, movie or game title?

What other criteria can you come up with?

 

Making a Whole

 

Using a Fraction Wall, students explored the concept of equivalence and identified ways to add fractions to a complete whole.

Yuvaan, Elias and Baron did a great job!

Fractions, Decimals and Percentages

 

Students were asked to draw a number line from 0 to 1, then place in position the following points:

1/4, 1/2, 3/4, 25%, 50%, 75%

Around the outside of the poster, they drew and labelled images that could be broken into those fractions, such as a half full bottle of drink, 75% of a pizza, an iPad battery charged to 25%, a bar chart with 16 walkers and 8 drivers, 3/4 of a bar of chocolate.

 

Using their poster as a reference, students posed and discussed questions such as:

What is the relationship between 0.25 and 1/4?  

Is 40% less than, more than or the same as 1/2? 

How much greater is 0.75 than 1/4?  

Is 91% greater than 3/4?  How can you prove this?

Which is greater, 25% or 1/6?

 

Well done to Ava, Claudia and Peter!

Fraction Flags

 

Using a grid of 24 squares, students were asked to create flag designs according to the following criteria:

1/4 must be yellow

1/3 must be red

1/8 must be green

1/12 must be black

1/6 must be blue

1/24 a colour of your choice

 

Here are some of 3AT students' designs!

 

Can you convert the fractions to decimals and/or percentages?

 

For those who are interested, here’s a link to a card game that you can play at home:

Half, More or Less - Love Maths

It’s a simple game that helps develop understanding of relative size of fractions. The only equipment you need in order to play the game is a deck of cards!

 

Looking forward to more Fractions, Decimals and Percentages activities over the next couple of weeks.

 

Regards,

The Year 3/4 Team

Cameron Batt, Ray Owens, Sarah Jacobs, Lisa Trevorrow, Lyndsey Thwaites, Sarah Amiconi, Jane Xie and Philip Wickham