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Teaching fractions at the primary standards is very simple, only when it is explained well and practiced more. I had such a great experience of this because when I was persuing my primary education I realy faced difficulties in fractions. I don't remember why but that part really trobled me a lot.
Whenever I see numerator and denominators I could get confused and my teacher used to punish me for not being able to read and draw the given fractions. The teacher sometimes could get confused self because while explaining some types of fractions he himself was not confident enough. Many of my friends complained several times to the teacher but he would turn a deaf ear to our problems. We could not assess internet as no such facility was available by that time. Teacher and parents were the only sourse of knowledge.
Considering all these problems of students l decided to teach Fractions in a very child friendly and interesting manner. For this purpose I prepared teaching learning material for easier learning of students.
I used squares, circles, triangles for practically demonstrating various ways of making equal portions. I designed set of activities for introducing fractions to the learners. Distributed all the sets to the students.
At first students read the instructions but couldn't understand the task but were so motivated seeing colourful shapes. They were eager to touch, cut and play with the shapes before. So instead of teaching them fractions I allowed students to play with the shapes .
For more than an hour students lost all there senses and were so involved that he himself has to divide the students into four groups and give them separate shapes some made with the help of students and I made some.
I simply put a question before students by challenging the groups to make as many ways as they can find equal parts of the shape provided to them. The teams accepted his challenge and began to find all possible ways to make equal portions of the assigned shapes. Their enthusiasm and creativity made me astonished. At the end they said, "That's it sir".Now you suggest your ways?"
I was very happy and started again playing with them. In this way we learnt half, quarter, one full and three quarters. Students learnt greater and smaller fractions. They themselves told me the numerator and denominators.
And gradually day after a day we learn Equivalent fractions, like and unlike fractions ,improper and mixed fractions, its conversion, all the basic activities like addition, substraction, multiplication and division of fractions.
Please do not forget to watch this video for better understanding. https://youtu.be/r1RTUQV7-FM
