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Fraction Cube

Fraction Cube

Students can have fun with fractions by creating a colorful cube that demonstrates some examples.

Lesson Plan

Supplies Needed

Gather all the supplies needed to bring your craft ideas to life! From paints and markers to glue and scissors, our crafts section has everything to spark creativity and make every project truly special.

  • Paper
  • Ruler
  • Tape

Steps

  • Step 1

    Ask students to think about how fractions are numbers that represent parts of a whole. They are written as one number over another, where the top (numerator) represents a number of parts of the bottom (denominator). Ask students to think of examples of fractions in real life. For example, if a pizza comes in eight slices and they eat one they've eaten 1/8th of a pizza. Or that a quarter = 25 cents, which is 1/4 of a dollar.

  • Step 2

    Have students create a fraction cube. To do this they will cut six squares of equal size - perhaps 2"x2". They will use a ruler and draw lines that divide the square into eight triangles, first by drawing perpendicular lines horizontally and vertically - corner to corner and side to side. Ask them to color a few triangles. Each square should have a different number of triangles colored in and each group of triangles should be represented by a different color.

  • Step 3

    Now ask students to tape the squares together into a cube. They can lay four squares face down and end to end, tape them together, and then fold them and attach the ends. Then they can tape the remaining squares to the open parts of the four they taped.

  • Step 4

    Have students form pairs or small groups and challenge them to create a fraction game. For example, each player rolls a cube then writes down the fraction represented. The person with the largest fraction wins that round. Or play several rounds where the player who rolls the highest fraction wins a point and the first person to get 10 points wins the game.

Standards

MATH: Create models that demonstrate math concepts and attend to precision.

MATH: Analyze, compare, create, and compose math ideas using written, oral, and drawn lines, shapes, forms and patterns.

MATH: Understand a fraction 1/b as the quantity formed by 1 part when a whole is partitioned into "b" equal parts; understand a fraction a/b as the quantity formed by "a" parts of size 1/b.

Adaptations

Have students represent dominoes in numeric and pictorial fractions. For example, a domino with 1 spot on one side and 3 spots on the other would be written as 1/3 and drawn as 3 rectangles with one colored in.

Have students make a prediction about the fraction that would represent their name, using the vowels as the numerator and the consonants as the denominator. After everyone predicts their name as a fraction, they will calculate it. Some will be whole numbers (for example Monica is 3/3) and others will not be whole numbers (for example Cheri is 2/3).