Summary

Understanding fractions is important. We often use fractions in our daily lives when doing things like following recipes, telling the time, measuring, and working with money and bank accounts. At school, fractions underpin many of the mathematical ideas our students will be faced with as they progress in mathematics. For instance: decimals, percentages, rates, and gradient all involve fractions. Fluency with fractions, including how to represent and work with them symbolically, is also a foundation for algebra. Algebra has been identified as a ‘gateway topic’ in mathematics. Success in algebra opens doors to all sorts of opportunities for further learning and careers.

Learning about fractions can be challenging. They represent a big conceptual jump from thinking about numbers as things we use to count with, to thinking about new sorts of numbers that exist between the counting numbers and that express a relationship between a part and a whole.