Resources for Teaching Fraction Arithmetic

Fractions is a math topic that baffles many third and fourth grade kids, so having a collection of useful teaching resources on hand is critical to student success. Working with fractions requires combining many of the operations learned in earlier grades, and understanding what fractional quantities really mean can take a lot of exposure and practice. I wanted to share a few resources with you that should help with fraction concepts, whether you are working with students in the classroom or at home.

Equivalent Fractions Chart

There is one super useful resource for visualizing the relationships between fractions with different denominators, and also seeing how equivalent fractions can be used to reduce fractions. I'm talking about a fractions chart! While I've shown a black background version to the left (which looks amazing), if you follow through the link you'll find versions with white background suitable for printing and inserting in 4th grade math notebooks or other places of interest. There are even full size equivalent fraction posters that are perfect for classroom walls.

Identifying and Visualizing Fractions

Pie diagrams are the everyday way to illustrate fractional quantities, and I've already linked to a visual fraction calculator that does this for any problem you can dream up. But in terms of desk work, you can see some of the same representations with this series of graphic fraction worksheets. Kids completing these worksheets will need to write fractions based on the pie diagrams, or alternatively create their own pie diagrams from written fractions.

Math Operations with Fractions

Working with fractions involves many detailed steps to complete even basic fraction addition and fraction subtraction. The adding fractions worksheets start out with problems that have common denominators, and then gradually progress to problems with different denominators and also mixed fractions.

Subtraction is similar, and the subtracting fraction worksheets follow the same path, avoiding different denominators at first and then progressing through mixed fractions. They also gradually introduce borrowing from wholes in mixed fractions once students have mastered earlier fraction subtraction skills.

Fraction multiplication comes with it's own special set of skills. This series of multiplying fractions worksheets includes, as you would expect, mixed fractions and it has special sets that focus on things like cross cancelling.

After multiplication, dividing fractions is a piece of cake. Just remember to take the reciprocal and follow the usual steps for multiplication.

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No matter how you approach teaching or learning fractions, you'll find plenty of resources to practice using the fraction worksheet links above. If you have more suggestions, let me know in the comments!