Ioan has previously looked at a whole, half and quarter, halving and finding a quarter, as well as celebrating VE Day with some VE Day fractions and a scone fraction dice game.

Resources

  • Smarties
  • Whiteboard
  • Whiteboard pen
  • Squared paper

Method

Invitation to play

I left the bowl of smarties out on the table, with some squared paper, cut in to a 2×2, 3×3, 4×4 and a 5×5 squares. Ioan has been looking at fractions this week, so I guessed he would so something fraction based, but what he did was entirely up to him.

Looking back at the fractions he had written, Ioan decided to move his 1/25 up to the top line so he could see them all in order.

Next, he filled the first column of each square with smarties. He wrote down the corresponding fractions.

Is half of the shape filled in?

I filled in some of the 4×4 grid with smarties and asked Ioan whether half of the shape was filled in. He identified that there were 16 spaces, so, half of that would be 8. Only six spaces were filled in.

It didn’t matter which direction the square was facing, you still needed two more smarties.

Similarly, it didn’t matter what position the 8 smarties were in, it always made 1/2 or 8/16.

How many different ways can you group 12 smarties equally?

The number of smarties you’ve got, is a quarter of the whole amount. Can you find the whole amount?

I thought Ioan had finished, so went off to play with his brothers. I came back and found that he’d done three more examples.

DfES Outcomes for EYFS and National Curriculum (2013)

Mathematics Year 2 programme of study

Number – fractions

  • recognise, find, name and write fractions 1/3, 1/4, 2/4 and 3/4 of a length, shape, set of objects or quantity
  • write simple fractions for example, 1/2 of 6 = 3 and recognise the equivalence of 2/4 and 1/2.