Lesson video

Our topic for the next two weeks is fractions.

Today, we'll be learning to identify, describe and represent fractions.

But first let me introduce myself.

My name is Miss Parsons and I'm a year six teacher in London.

I can't wait to teach you maths because it's the foundation of everything that we do, and I love solving problems. Now let's get on with some learning.

Let's get ready to learn.

For today's lesson, all you will need is a pencil and a piece of paper or exercise book.

Pause the video now and get your equipment ready.

In today's lesson, we're going to identify, describe and represent fractions or look at how we can represent fractions, how we can identify fractions followed by an independent task to practise what we've learned today.

Finally, you'll do an end of lesson quiz to test everything that you've learnt in today's lesson.

Now let's start by thinking about how we use fractions in real life.

Pause the video, look at the images and note down how they are related to fractions.

These are some of the ideas you may have had.

You can see the football pitch and some sports such as football or hockey, you may have heard of halftime, which is signalled when half of the match has been played.

The moon image represents the phases that the moon goes through, where different fractions of the moon are visible, such as a full moon or a half moon.

You can also divide food such as cake or pizza into fractions so that everyone gets an equal share.

Let's have a look at how we can represent the fraction three fifths.

Now we'll start off with concrete representations.

This is when we use actual objects to make a representation.

In my example, I've used pieces of fruit.

There are five pieces of fruit altogether.

Three out of the five pieces are limes, therefore three fifths are limes.

To create a number representation, we will use the vinculum, the numerator and the denominator, which you will be familiar with from previous learning.

The numerator is the number of items that we're looking at, so in this case, we're looking at three.

The denominator represents the total number of parts, which is five.

Three out of five, three fifths.

For pictorial representations, you can draw a picture of anything you want to show the fraction.

So I could draw five circles, which represents the number of parts that's the denominator and shade in three of them, which is the number of parts that I'm interested in.

So three out of five are shaded.

I could also draw a bar model, split into five equal parts, and again, shade three of those parts.

When I'm writing a word representation, this has already been written as a word three fifths, but I could also write something like three out of five, which was what I had in my concrete representation.

Three out of the five pieces of fruit were limes.

Now it's your turn.

Pause the video and use the headings below to represent the fraction three quarters.

There are some number representations that you may have come up with.

In this image, three out of the four counters are black, so three quarters of the counters are black.

With the number representation and the pictorial and word representations, they're similar to what we had on our previous slide.

Now we're going to move on to deepen our understanding and identify different fractions.

In this example the value of the brown rod is one.

We want to know what is the value of the red rod? Well, I can see that four red rods are equal to one brown rod.

Four red rods are the same length as one brown rod.

Each red rod is therefore worth one quarter.

There were four red rods, which is my denominator, that's the number of parts, each one represents one quarter.

So if I were to ask myself, what is the value of three red rods? I will be looking at one quarter, two quarters, three quarters.

The value of three red rods is three quarters.

Now in my next example, the value of the brown rod is still one.

We worked out that the value of each red rod was one quarter, each red rod is one quarter.

I would like to write that onto the red rod, but it doesn't work with my red pen.

Now we need to work out what is the value of the orange rod? Now I can see that it's definitely greater than one because the orange rod is longer than the brown rod.

So I know the answer will be more than one.

I can also see that if I add one more red rod, that will be the same length as the orange rod.

Remember the red rod had a value of one quarter, so I can see that five red rods are equal to one orange rod, therefore the orange rod has a value of five quarters.

Now it's your turn.

In your example, the orange rod, this time has a value of one.

You need to find the values of the red and brown rods.

Pause the video now and work out their values.

Now check your answers.

We can see that five red rods are equal to one orange rod, therefore each red rod has a value of one fifth.

We knew that the brown rod was going to have a value of less than one, because it was shorter than the orange rod, and it was equal to four red rods.

Therefore, the value of the brown rod is four fifths.

Now it's time for you to practise what you have learnt in this lesson independently.

Pause the video and complete the independent task.

Come back here when you're finished so that we can go through the answers.

Now let's go through the answers.

Mark and correct your work as we go along.

In question one, you were asked to use the images to represent the fraction two fifths.

The rectangle here is divided into five parts, so you should have shaded two out of the five parts.

The same is true for the circles where we have five circles.

So any two of the five circles should have been shaded.

The fraction, we know that the denominator represents the total number of parts, and there are five parts in total.

The numerator represents the number of parts that we are interested in, and that is as we can check in our pictorial representations, two out of the five parts, so two fifths.

Now this last image was much trickier and I'll be very impressed if you had to go at this one.

This time, our number line has been split into 10 equal parts.

We need to make sure that we have it in five equal parts.

So we can split it into five equal parts, and then we can shade two of those.

Now we can see a link here.

We can see that two fifths is equal to one, two, three, four tenths, because it was originally split into 10 parts.

Now we will be looking much closer at this concept of equivalent fractions tomorrow.

Let's move on to question two.

In this question, the value of the green rod is one.

We need to work out the value of the white, yellow, and black rods.

And we can see that six white rods, one, two, three, four, five, six, white rods are the same length as one green rod.

Therefore each white rod represents one sixth.

Six parts, each one represents one of those parts.

The yellow rod is shorter than the green rod, so the answer will be less than one.

And if I line it up with my white rods, I can see that one, two, three, four, five white rods is the same as one yellow rod.

And that's five sixths.

With the black rod, I can see that if I added one more white rod, it would have been equivalent to the black rod.

Another white rod makes seven sixths.

Make sure that you are marking and editing your answers as we go along.

Question three, the value of the blue rod is one, we can see that one, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight, nine white rods are equal to one blue rod.

Therefore the value of each white rod is one ninth.

You may have noticed something for the next one.

You can see the three green rods are equal to one blue rod, therefore each one has a value of one third.

You may also have noticed that one green rod is equal to three white rods, which means that one third is equivalent to three ninths.

And the final one, if we popped another white rod onto that line, onto the rod, it would be equivalent to the orange rod.

We had nine white rods initially, but now it's 10.

So the orange rod is equivalent to ten ninths.

Now, finally, you were asked to insert one of the symbols to make the number sentence correct.

Less than, greater than or equal to.

And you've got this handy box at the side to help you.

So we want to know two fifths versus one eighth.

Now my top box represents fifths.

So two fifths and one eighth.

I can clearly see that two fifths is greater than one eighth.

My second one, four fifths, four shaded this time and seven eighths, four, five, six, seven.

I can see that seven eighths is greater than four fifths or four fifths is less than seven eighths.

Oh, it's coming for your final knowledge quiz.

Pause the video and complete the knowledge quiz to see what you have remembered.

Amazing work today, well done everyone for joining.

I'm looking forward to meeting you back here when we'll be learning to identify equivalent relationships between fractions.

We've started to do that today, but we'll learn more about it.

See you then.