Today we are going to find out about…. Fractions

Before I came to school, I called in at the shop and bought some Smarties.

I then counted how many Smarties there were in my tube. Can you guess how many? Yes, you are right there are 24 in total.

I then sorted the 24 Smarties into colours Can you guess how many of the red ones there were? There were 6 red Smarties.

Can anyone tell me what Fraction of red Smarties are in my tube? 6 6 is the number of red ones in my tube. 24 24 is the total number of Smarties in my tube. Shall I show you how?

Therefore, the fraction of red Smarties in my tube is …. 6 Six 24 Twenty fourths Can you make this fraction smaller? (Or Simplify it.)

Yes, ‘you can’. But how can we do it? 6 3 1 = = 12 24 4 What ever you do to the top, you must do the same to the bottom of the fraction. In this case we have halved it, to get three twelfths and then divided by 3 to get one quarter. Shall I show you?

Shall we try another colour together? So, we could say that one quarter of the Smarties tube are Red Smarties. Shall we try another colour together?

This time let’s try the blue Smarties. In my tube there are 8 blue Smarties.

Write it on your white board and hold it up. How would you write this as a fraction? Write it on your white board and hold it up.

Yes, well done. You should have written it like this. 8 24 Is the number of blue Smarties. 24 Is the total number of Smarties in the tube.

Could we simplify or make this fraction smaller? Have a try. Hold up your boards if you can do it.

Did you manage to do it? It should look like one of these fractions below. 8 4 1 or or 24 12 3

So we could say that one third of the Smarties in our tube are blue. The remainder of the Smarties are Yellow can you work out how many there are?

Shall I show you how to work it out? We know that there are 24 Smarties in the tube. We also know that there are 6 red Smarties. Finally, we know that there are 8 blue Smarties. Therefore…8 + 6 = 14 24 – 14 = 10 There are 10 yellow Smarties.

Can you express the yellow Smarties as a fraction? If you can, write it on your board and show me. It should look like this. 10 24

Now see if you can simplify it. It should look like this. 10 5 ‘Simplified is’ 12 24

Thank you for taking part in my fractions game. Why not try it at home and see if you can work out fractions.