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Fractions

A collection of papers originally written to stimulate discussion in the AAMT Virtual Conference 2004.

This topic was chosen for the Virtual Cnference because it is one that challenges teachers at all levels of schooling. There wouldn’t be an issue if the students have been carefully introduced to the idea of fractions, become familiar with different representations (decimals, ratios etc.) that are important components of proportional thinking, moved to operating with numerical fractions and then used this knowledge and skills fluently when working with algebraic fractions. Not much to ask!

Several papers were written focussing on teaching and learning at different levels of schooling:

When a half is not a half

A short paper about the early introduction of fraction ideas by Denise Neal (Tasmania).

vc-neal.pdf 70.72 kB

Bags of flour

A task for middle/upper primary students that you can try in your own classroom. The task has been extensively researched by the team working on the FIrst Steps Mathematics Project in Western Australia and you can compare your students' work with their analyses of common errors and misconceptions (thanks to Kaye Treacy and colleagues in WA).

vc-treacy.pdf 190.83 kB