Maths: Equivalent Fractions, Percentages and Decimals

This week in maths, we have been consolidating our understanding of fractions, decimals and percentages. We began by defining what we mean by equivalent and reminding ourselves that equivalent fractions represent the same value. We know that whatever we do to the denominator, we must also do to the numerator. Working collaboratively with our partners, we used manipulatives to represent amounts in different ways and explored how the same value can be written as a fraction, a decimal and a percentage.

We were given 20 different coloured pegs and took turns to choose a colour and find the fraction of the total. We were then able to scale this up to find the percentage, as percentages are fractions out of 100. We used this understanding to help us identify the matching decimal. For example, if we had 3/20 green pegs, we multiplied the numerator and denominator by 5 to find the equivalent fraction of 15/100. This allowed us to identify the percentage as 15% and recognise that this is also 15 hundredths, or 1 tenth and 5 hundredths, giving us the decimal 0.15.

The lesson focused on developing strong conceptual understanding, with us explaining our thinking using mathematical vocabulary and justifying our answers. We also tackled challenge questions that required reasoning, comparison and problem-solving, including working backwards from given percentages and considering what happens when the ‘whole’ changes.

It was a great opportunity to work alongside our learning partners in order to support one another and also expand our thinking through our reasoning too. 

How did using the pegs help you understand fractions, decimals and percentages?