The following resource has been kindly shared on the TES Maths website. It is available to download for free by registering. And to access all the lovely Resource of the Week (ROTW) resources, just click here
What is it?
One of the greatest clichés is that the simplest things in life are the best. Well, if this resource is anything to go by, that cliché is 100% true. From such a simple hook – draw two straight lines across a rectangle and work out the size of the fractions you create – can come a whole host of fun, engaging and challenging investigation and discovery.
How can it be used?
This activity is right up my street. Any of you who have used any of the activities in my Rich Task Collection (all available for free on TES) will know that I am a huge fan of a simple set up, which is the followed by interesting probing questions and lines of inquiry. So, for something like this, once the students have created a few fractions, we could ask them:
- What is the smallest fraction you can make?
- How about the largest?
- How many of the different denominators between 1 and 10 can you make?
- How many of the different numerators between 1 and 5 can you make?
- How many different ways can you slit the shape into halves?
- How many different ways can you create a quarter?
- How many different ways can you create two equal fractions?
- What about if you could use 3 lines?
- What about if the rectangle has more dots around the outside?
- What if the rectangle was divided into equal sections?
I feel another rich task coming along!
Thanks for sharing!
Craig Barton
Download Fractions Investigation
View the author’s other resources