Lesson video

Hi again, everyone, and welcome to our third lesson on fractions.

This lesson is all about recognising, identifying, and describing unit fractions.

I hope you're ready, let's get started.

Okay, in this lesson, we're going to be exploring unit fractions, so you will need a pencil and some paper, that's it.

Make sure you've completed the knowledge quiz that you would have seen before before starting this.

Okay, a bit of a warm up for us.

What can you remember about fractions? Maybe you can remember something from the last couple of lessons, or maybe you remember something you've done previously.

Perhaps in year two? What I'd like you to do is get a blank piece of paper, what can you draw about fractions to show your understanding of what fractions are.

Try and make a little mind map of everything you can remember and everything you can think about fractions.

You might want to draw it, you might want to write some things, see how much you can come up with.

Try and explain it to someone else there with you as you're doing it.

Pause the video now, and when you've finished, play again.

Okay, guys, let's introduce our Star Words.

Maybe some of these came up in your mind maps.

My turn, your turn.

Part.

Whole.

Divide.

Equal.

Fraction names.

Vinculum.

Denominator.

Numerator.

Now, just 'cause we're in the third lesson, I would hope now we're feeling quite confident with part and whole, and feeling quite confident with equal.

I would understand if some of us are struggling a little bit with these three words at the bottom: vinculum, denominator, numerator.

Now, I will go into these later, but just keep them in your head 'cause we're going to be trying to use them later.

Let's have a look at this picture.

Now, thinking about fractions and everything we did with part and whole on Monday.

Let's have a look.

Looking at those biscuits, what do you think is the whole? Okay, great, so there are four biscuits in total.

So our whole is four.

But how many parts are there? Well, the parts are how many people we want to split them up into.

And there are two people that we want to share them between.

So, in order to get those groups, we need to share them into two equal groups.

How many biscuits is each person going to get? That's right, if we have four biscuits, and we've got two people that we're sharing them between, then each person is going to be getting two biscuits.

Okay, now I've got two biscuits, and I've got two people to share them between.

So, can you describe to somebody else what is the whole? How many parts are there? And how many biscuits would each person get if they were shared in equal groups? So, if we've got two biscuits, then our whole is two.

But we're sharing them equally between two people.

So, we're putting them into two equal groups.

So each person is going to get one biscuit each.

Now, it gets a little bit trickier.

Suddenly, I've only got one biscuit.

So, what do you think my whole is? How many parts are there? 'Cause we now need to share one biscuit between two people.

So, what can we do in order to be able to do that? Well, that's right, that's pretty much where our fractions come in to help us.

'Cause we need to share one biscuit between two people, and that is how we're going to get one-half each.

Now, you'll notice that I'm not writing anything yet because we're going to have a look at how we write our fractions in a second.

At the moment, I just want us to talk about it.

A little bit tricker now, we've got one can of drink, but we've got three thirsty children who all want a part of that drink.

So, how can we make sure that the three people all get an equal amount? So, we've got three parts, there's one in the whole, how can we make sure that all three people get an equal amount? What are we going to be able to do? Discuss it with someone next to you.

That's right, if we want to share things, we need to be able to put them into three equal parts to have to share them equally.

So, each person is going to get one out of three parts.

So, in that case, they're all going to get one out of three.

What do we call it when we split things into three equal parts? Yep, that's right, it's called a third.

Now, more of a tricky context now.

So, Lucy is trying to spend an equal amount of time doing all these four things, and she's got one hour to do it.

So, she wants to spend equal time doing her homework, tidying her room, reading a book, and watching TV.

So, what is the whole? Our whole is the hour, is the amount of time we're spending.

And then the parts, well, there's four different things that she wants to do.

So we've got four parts that she wants to equally split it between.

So, in order to do that, we need to share one hour into four equal parts.

So, each one is going to be worth one out of four, or a quarter.

Okay, I haven't written anything down yet, so, what we now need to be able to do is be able to represent our fractions properly by writing them down.

I'm going to give you a second.

How do you write a fraction? How have you written it down before? Pause the video and have a bit of a think, and try and write down a couple of examples of fractions.

And think about how you're writing them.

Okay, when we write fractions, what do we do first? Well, the first thing we do is want to show everybody that we're about to write a fraction.

So we need to draw our line in the middle.

What do you call our line in the middle? It has to have a name.

Well, it does, it's called our vinculum.

So, say that with me: vinculum.

It's a good word.

Now, once we've got that, we're going to have two other parts to our fraction.

Now, doing it in order, you'd think we might start at the top, but we don't.

We try and start at the bottom, 'cause that helps us to think about how many parts we want to share the whole into, and that should be what we think about first.

So, how many parts do we share our whole into is called our denominator.

Say that with me: our denominator.

And lastly, when we've worked out what our denominator is, we then need to see how many parts we're going to get of it, or we're giving out of it.

And that goes up here.

So this is called our numerator.

Say that with me: numerator.

That's how many parts we want of it, or how many parts we're counting of it.

Okay, now we've got this idea of being able to write a fraction properly.

We're going to have a go at writing some fractions.

Here's another example, this queue of people want to share a chocolate bar equally.

Now, how would they go about writing how much chocolate each one of them gets as a fraction? I'd like you to think about what you would write, and write it down.

What fraction is each person going to get of the chocolate bar? Hopefully, you've got an answer now.

So, if we have got one chocolate bar, and we are splitting it equally, sharing between one, two, three, four, five people, then we know our denominator, how many parts we want to split it into is going to be five.

And our numerator is going to be one, 'cause it is one person who's going to be getting it, so one out of five.

So they're all going to get one out of five, and then the five parts all together will be the whole chocolate bar.

Try another, this is our example from earlier.

So, biscuit is split equally between two pieces.

Can you write down the fraction that each person is going to get? How much is each person going to get? Okay, let's look at that together, then.

So, we know that one is the whole, but we're going to be splitting it equally between two parts, so therefore, each person is going to be getting one of those two parts.

There are two people that we split it equally between, so that's our denominator, and one, each person's getting one of those two pieces.

So that is one out of two, or one-half.

Last one that we looked at then.

So, what fraction, and can you write down the fraction that you should have here? Okay, that's right.

So, hopefully, you have got one out of three.

So, each person's getting one out of the three, or one-third of the can of drink.

The drink is our whole, and there are three equal parts that we're sharing it between, so that is our denominator.

Okay guys, it's now over to you.

We've had a bit of a practise of writing some fractions, I now want you to be able to look at some different fractions and be able to represent them and write down the fractions that you can see.

So, for each of these examples, I'd like you to write down the shaded part, so the grey part, as a fraction.

Think carefully, the vinculum is already done for you.

So, you need to first work out how many parts is there in total to make my denominator, and then, work out how many parts are shaded.

And that will be your numerator, okay.

So, your denominator is the whole number of parts it's split into, the numerator is how many are shaded to create our different fractions here.

Once you've done that, Activity 2, have a think and try and draw your own shapes or objects to represent the following unit fractions.

So, can you draw me something, maybe a shape a little bit like this and then shade in, to show one-seventh? Something different to show one-eighth.

Something different to show one-sixth.

Now, remember, they need to be split into equal parts.

Remember the learning from yesterday.

Okay guys, pause the video now, and then, when you're finished, play again and we'll have a look at the answers.

Right guys, hopefully we've got through all of that, so let's have a look at the answers that we should have had.

Okay, our first one, we can see that is it split into five equal parts, and one of them is shaded, so there is one-fifth shaded.

Can see here that there are two equal parts, that's my denominator, and one is shaded, that's my numerator.

We can see here that it's split into four equal parts, and one of them is shaded.

Do you notice the pattern? Because we're doing unit fractions.

And here, we've split it into six parts, so six is my denominator, and one is shaded.

Here, we've split it into seven parts, but one is shaded, so that's one-seventh, or one out of seven.

And here, we can see that we split it into three parts, our whole, so that's our denominator of three, and our numerator is just one part.

I wonder if anyone here also saw that perhaps you could have counted the stars instead.

What fraction would have that given you? Yes, so in total, the total number of parts if we're looking at the stars, there would be nine parts.

And we would have shaded three of them.

So we would have had three-ninths.

But it's the same amount, it's the same amount shaded.

Okay guys.

Thank you very much for working so hard today.

I hope you feel a little bit more secure about finding fractions in unit fractions.

Now, remember, before you go, to do the final quiz so that you can finish, and I will see you again tomorrow.

Goodbye.