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Equivalent Fractions (III)

© Vidya Narayan Wadadekar

You can draw simple diagrams to identify equivalent fractions as explained below. Draw a square. Draw a vertical line inside the square to get two equivalent parts. Color the left part of the square and label it as ½. Suppose we want to find out an equivalent fraction of half with a denominator of 6. Since '6' is three times two (two is the denominator of half), we need to divide the square (with two equivalent parts) further to get three equal parts. After getting three equal parts, we identify the new fraction, which represents the colored part of the square.

This is shown in the diagram below.

This shows that 3/6 is the desired equivalent fraction of one half.

The same activity of finding out equivalent fractions can be done on a number line as shown below:

This activity also shows that the desired equivalent fraction of one half is 3/6.

After finding out equivalent fractions of many fractions using different tools, children should be led to find out a rule to find out equivalent fractions.

Children should be reminded of the Compensation Property of Division, which they have seen in the article "Properties of division" . This is the property which can provide the equivalent fractions directly.

According to this property, whatever multiplication operation is carried out on the dividend (numerator), if it is compensated by the same operation on the divisor (denominator); the quotient remains unchanged.

Having developed the understanding of the concept of equivalent fractions, children can obtain practice of finding out equivalent fractions on the following links:

"Fraction Frenzy" is a game to match equivalent fractions. The activity on this link has no visuals. However, it allows application of the rule learned. Here, many pairs of equivalent fractions are provided in jumbled fashion and they are to be matched.

Here is one more "link" with more problems to solve.

This "fraction manipulative" gives visuals of different fractions the child may think of. It allows selection of 'the number of times' of the given fraction the child may like to choose. This is a good virtual manipulative for finding equivalent fractions.

So far, we have learned to get equivalent fractions by multiplying the dividend and the devisor with the same multiplier. This allows us to obtain fractions with higher terms.

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