Use BookWidgets to teach fractions - 8 fun lesson examples

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There are many digital tools that allow teachers to create lesson materials, but most of them do not support math formulas. That’s the first thing that distinguishes BookWidgets from the rest (for a mathematician, of course).

Another thing is the variety of widgets and question types. While exploring fractions with students, BookWidgets can offer endless possibilities to make things even more interesting.

8 Ways to make fractions interesting

1. Jigsaw Puzzle

At the very begining, students could find it interesting to learn new terms (numerator, denominator and the fraction bar) by putting the pieces of a jigsaw puzzle together. Take a look at the example and try it out:

2. Randomness

Students can practice to determine the colored part of a geometric shape with this randomness widget.

This type of exercise also useful to practice the basics of fractions for example. Each student spins the wheel, reads the fraction out loud, determines denominator and numerator, decides whether the fraction is proper or improper, and if it’s improper, converts it to a mixed number or an integer. If it’s used on a smart board, expect some serious student excitement: everyone wants to try it. This also means they will listen carefully to each other, to be certain to get it right when they get their turn.

3. Whiteboard

How about some coloring? BookWidgets contains a whiteboard where you can insert pictures (shapes) and let your students color the part you want. Especially interesting is to divide a shape into e.g. ten equal pieces, and ask them to color 2/5. Just like that, no explanation needed. Let them struggle for a while, they will get it right, but it takes some time. Coloring doesn’t need to be perfect.

4. Pair Matching

There is another interesting widget you can use for dealing with fractions: Pair Matching. This one is great for finding equivalent fractions:

Or, you can use the Pair Matching widget for matching improper fraction to a mixed number as well. Are you up for the challenge?

5. Bingo

Well known games, such as bingo, might come handy to practice simplifying fractions. Each student gets different card on his device containing fields with irreducible fractions. Teachers can prepare small cards with fractions like 10/60, 14/16, 22/24, 25/30 … Then, the teacher picks out a card, reads or writes the fraction for students to reduce it. After reducing it, they tap it on their bingo card so that the field changes color. The first one who marks all of the fields in one row or a column and to shout “Bingo!” is the winner. This one is also guaranteed to bring a lot of excitement in the classroom.

6. Worksheet

How about making your students debate and accept or reject different ideas? Just give them few fractions such as in the worksheet below, and ask to choose the odd one out, with no instructions at all.

They need to explain their choice after some time. Something like “all the other fractions are in their lowest terms except this one” or “all the other fractions are improper except this one”.

7. Crossword

The crossword puzzle can be used to revise the terms such as numerator, denominator, proper, improper or equivalent fractions in a fun way.

8. Quiz

When it comes to grading your students' knowledge, BookWidgets comes in handy. The Quiz widget contains many question types which can be used dealing with fractions. Numeric answer question is really helpful, since you can choose the answer style to be a single number, a fraction or a mixed number.

Here is an example of such a test below. And the best thing: BookWidgets does all the grading instead of a teacher!

If you can do all of this just teaching fractions, you can imagine what possibilities there are for any other subject or topic!