Year 1 Fractions
Fortunately, the targets for children to achieve in Year 1 are sensible:
- recognise, find and name a half as one of two equal parts of an object, shape or quantity.
- recognise, find and name a quarter as one of four equal parts of an object, shape or quantity.
It is important to get off to a good start with fractions to give children confidence when dealing with harder fractions later in primary school. Children need to see fractions in two ways.
One way is to see a fraction as a part of one whole one. This requires making equal sized parts of a whole e.g. if a cake is cut into 2 equal parts, each part is called a half.
Fractions can also be seen as part of a set, so a half of a set of eight sweets requires dividing the 8 sweets into two equal parts and then counting how many there are in each part (4 in this case).
Children begin with practical work, using real life objects that can be cut in half or into quarters and it is important that the parts must be of equal size.
Once children have understood finding a half of an object or shape, they can then move on to finding half of a small quantity. To complement the practical activities we have plenty of bright, colourful pages, well worth a look.