FRACTIONS
LET’S RECALL
A fraction is part of a whole.
For example, a pizza is divided into eight equal pieces, then each piece is
represented by 1/8.
KNOWLEDGE CHECK
Let’s apply our
knowledge of fractions
to help Ana and Bruno
do an activity.
LET’S DO
Ana and Bruno want to draw pictures but they have only got one big piece of paper.
Ana wants to draw a big picture and Bruno wants to draw two smaller pictures.
“Let’s cut up the paper into smaller pieces”, says Ana.
So, Ana’s portion is half the big piece of paper and Bruno’s two pieces are
each a quarter of the big paper.
Show how the paper looks before it is cut:
Draw a vertical line of symmetry.
Then draw a horizontal line of symmetry.
Colour Ana’s piece of the paper blue.
Colour one of Bruno’s pieces of paper red.
Colour the other piece purple.
UNIT FRACTIONS
Write the fraction of the shaded red part in each of the figures given below.
Do you notice what these fractions have in common?
That's right!
They all have a numerator of 1.
A fraction whose numerator is 1 is called a unit fraction.
👉 A unit fraction is always just one part of the whole.
Unit
means
ONE
Take a look at these visual models, or drawings, for
some unit fractions.
Tip: Unit fractions only have one part that's shaded or coloured.
Exercise:
Write how many equal parts. Shade one part. Write its unit fraction.
The ancient Egyptians only ever
used unit fractions. They did all
their calculations ( which usually
involved splitting up sacks of
grains and such things) with unit
fractions.
COMPARING AND ORDERING UNIT FRACTIONS
In the picture given below, each of the strips of equal length has some shaded part.
Write the fraction shown by the shaded part of each strip in the box next to it.
Now look at the pictures and the fractions written in the boxes and answer the following
questions.
The bigger the The larger the
denominator, the denominator, the
larger the smaller the
fraction. fraction.
Who ate the smaller meal?
_______had the smaller meal because is smaller than
Exercise:
22 2.
33
3
5. Fill in the blank with the correct option.
As the denominator of the fractions with numerator 1 keeps increasing the value of the
fractions keeps _______________ (increasing/decreasing)
As the denominator of the fractions with numerator 1 keeps decreasing the value of the
fractions keeps _______________ (increasing/decreasing)
UNIT FRACTION PUZZLE
Here is a
Birthday Cake
Puzzle for you!
How many unit
fractions make
up this whole
cake?
That sounds like
such a difficult
puzzle!
Can I just eat the
cake?
In fact its quite
simple!
4 unit fractions
make up the whole.
The number of unit
fractions is based on
the denominator.
Oh, it’s that simple!
Now can you try
to solve the
birthday cake
puzzle?
How many unit
fractions make
up this whole
cake?
The birthday cake is divided into 10
parts. So the denominator of each
unit fraction is 10. And hence 10
unit fractions make up the whole
cake.
That’s wonderful!
Now you can eat your
piece of cake.
Exercise:
How many unit fractions make up the whole for each of the models given below?
____ unit fractions make up the whole circle.
____ unit fractions make up the whole rectangle.
____ unit fractions make up the whole triangle.
____ unit fractions make up the whole hexagon.
UNIT FRACTION MULTIPLES
Fractions can refer to more than one part of an
equally divided shape.
The numerator tells us how many parts in the
fraction. The denominator tells us how many parts in
Exercise:
Colour each of the given fraction bars as instructed.
total.
Write the fraction of the shaded parts in each of the models given below.
A fraction
whose numerator is 1 is
called a unit fraction.
The larger the
The number of unit
denominator, the
fractions is based
smaller the fraction.
on the
denominator.
Fractions can refer to more
than one part of an equally
divided shape.