Tips and Activities for Teaching Fractions in the First Grade Classroom
Getting ready to teach fractions in your classroom? Never fear teacher-friend; this doesn’t have to be difficult! With the right activities and approach, teaching fractions can actually be a lot of fun in the primary classroom. Let’s dive in together!
Get Ready to Love Teaching Fractions!
The key to being successful in teaching fractions (and really, any topic) is to make sure you’ve got a stellar introduction. We want to snag students’ attention right out of the gate and make them perk up and focus! So how do we do this? In my room, my absolute favorite way to introduce fractions to young students was always with food. Snacks are a relatable motivator for many students, and they’re sure to make fractions more fun!
Here’s How It Works:
Try using cookies, graham crackers, or any special treat that can be cut or broken into pieces. Hold up the item and casually ask if anyone would like some. Then, walk up to a couple of students, break the treat in two or more unequal pieces (making sure one side is larger), and divvy it out. You know what comes next, right? Someone says, “Hey, that’s not fair!”. This is the perfect opportunity to introduce the concept of equality by defining equal and unequal parts. Ask the students why it’s not fair and use their answers to guide your conversation towards fractions.
You can then model what equal parts would look like by breaking another item into true halves. We take this activity a bit further after the initial intro with a hands-on student activity, and everyone gets a graham cracker of their own to divide up into parts as we chat. If you want more details, keep reading about this whole lesson in my post, 3 Fun Hands-On Fractions Activities.
When we use something as exciting as food to introduce fractions to students, the buy-in goes WAY up! You’ll be able to make this activity fun from the start and capture their interest. I find this to be so valuable, especially with a topic that’s a bit tricky, such as fractions.
Read Books with a Food Fractions Theme
After your initial introduction to fractions with food, why not keep this theme rolling? It’s relatable for students and just plain fun! There are a couple of fun books that I love to use as we continue to explore this topic. Eating Fractions by Bruce McMillan gives many great examples of fractions in action with food. Students will learn key vocabulary words as well, such as whole, part, halves, thirds, and fourths. This book uses real pictures and examples that will help your students easily grasp this concept as you begin teaching fractions.
Another great option to read aloud is Give Me Half! by Stuart J. Murphy. This book poses the question of how to share a pizza equally. It does a great job of walking students through the process of dividing the pizza into equal parts. The process is repeated in the book with a container of juice and cupcakes, making it a deliciously fun read! Here is a link to a read-aloud version of this book on YouTube if you’d like to play it for your students.
A Fraction’s Goal ― Parts of a Whole by Brian P. Cleary is another great option to help you make teaching fractions easier and more fun for students. In this book, students will learn how a pizza is divided up depending on the number of people you’re looking to serve. Students will also love the fun, rhyming style of the text as you read aloud.
Teaching Fractions with Hands-On Materials
When it comes to teaching fractions, I like to make it as hands-on as possible. Young students benefit so much from building and using tactile materials, so I love to use fun materials like playdough, shaving cream, puzzles, and snap cubes to teach equal and unequal parts.
Shaving Cream
To use shaving cream to demonstrate this, you’ll want to be seated at a table with a small group of students. Give each kiddo a squirt of shaving cream and have them use their hands to spread it out on the table. Then, have them draw two circles that are about the same size, side by side. Ask them to split one circle into two equal parts, straight down the middle. Next, instruct them to split the second circle, but this time, make the parts unequal. You will probably need to provide an example first, but if they recall the graham cracker lesson, they might be able to do this independently right away. After the circles have been drawn and divided, reinforce the vocabulary by having them point to the circles or sections that represent equal, unequal, part, whole. Then remind them that a fraction is ‘equal parts of a whole’ and ask them to show which circle shows a fraction. If you have begun naming fractions, you can repeat this process with halves, thirds, fourths, etc.
Playdough
The process for using playdough is similar, except you will give kids round and square cookie cutters and popsicle sticks. They will roll out their dough, cut out a circle or square, and then use the popsicle stick to “cut” the playdough into equal or unequal parts. After dividing each shape up, compare them just like the first example. This is such a great visual and really helps drive this concept home.
Food Fractions Puzzles
Another food fraction idea? I know, I know! But what can I say? Food is fun, and over the years, I’ve found that students are very responsive to it when teaching fractions. It really helps them wrap their brains around the concepts you’re teaching! These fun fraction puzzles illustrate common fractions with food. Students will love building food items and breaking them into sections with this set. Try placing it in your math center and having students trace the pieces on a sheet of paper as they work to form the whole food item. These visuals are great for teaching fractions!
Snap Cube Towers
Another fun tool are these Fractions Tower Cubes. They provide an excellent visual for how one whole can be split up. In first grade, we teach whole, halves, thirds, and fourths, so you won’t be using all of the pieces in this set immediately, but they’re still fun to have on hand for students who excel and want to dive a little deeper.
These fraction blocks make a great visual and hands-on opportunity for students to explore fractions. I would lay out the pieces that represent whole, halves, thirds, and fourths side by side. This shows the students that a whole can be broken up in different ways. This always leads to a conversation about each one, and I like to make an anchor chart with each word and a picture of what that looks like. You can have students follow along and create their own charts in their math journals for reference. I also have pre-made anchor charts in my Fractions Worksheets Resource, more on those below!
Practice Fractions with Fun Activities
After you’ve introduced fractions to your students, read a few books, and worked on hands-on learning activities, you can take this a bit further with classroom practice activities. My favorite way to do this is with engaging task cards and recording sheets. They’re wonderful because you can use them in small groups for instruction, as a center activity, and even as a whole class Scoot game! When I was teaching fractions in my room, I used all three of these variations to keep things interesting. Since there’s more than one way to use them, the activity feels fresh each time.
These Fraction Math Task Cards include both a printable and digital option. The printable version includes 30 task cards in two versions, as well as multiple recording sheet options. There are varied levels of response boxes on the recording sheets to adjust the difficulty of this activity. The task cards cover halves, thirds, and fourths, making them perfect for primary learners. Students will choose a card, solve the task, and record it on their sheet.
In the digital option, you’ll find 30 Google Slides with engaging fraction activities on each one. They’re fantastic to assign for distance learning, homework, or to use as a technology center. I also found these to be especially helpful when it comes to modeling fractions in my teaching. I’d simply project these up on the board and walk through the task with my students to teach the concept. This is such a valuable tool when teaching fractions!
Review Fractions with No-Prep Worksheets
After students have gotten their feet wet and you’ve been teaching fractions for a little while, you will likely want to supplement your lessons with no-prep printables. While I firmly believe that hands-on learning is best for teaching fractions, practice worksheets are an EXCELLENT way to review and continue practicing!
The ones we always used in my classroom provide mixed practice for whole, halves, thirds, and fourths. There are 27 pages included that are aligned to first-grade standards for teaching fractions, so you can rest easy knowing these aren’t just fluff! Inside, students will work on engaging exercises and activities to practice applying what they’ve learned about fractions. These are great to weave into your math lessons and centers and even send home as homework.
This set also includes 3 printable anchor charts that students can add to their math journals or use as reference as they work on fraction activities. These define halves, thirds, and fourths with text and pictures to help your students remember the difference between each one. You’ll also find 2 quick check assessments and answer keys to make using this resource super simple and user-friendly. I find that having these materials on hand makes it really easy to weave additional practice into our routine. And just like anything, practice makes progress, so make sure you provide plenty of opportunities to do so!
Have Fun Teaching Fractions!
I am all about ways to make learning a little more fun for our students, and that’s certainly true when teaching fractions! I hope these ideas inspired you to try something new in your classroom to make fractions more engaging. The key is to choose a variety of teaching methods, use hands-on learning activities, incorporate many opportunities to practice, and when in doubt, use food!
If you need some no-prep activities to add to your fraction lesson plans, make sure to check out these resources.
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