middle school fraction difficulties

[Hope]

My 13 year old is having lots of trouble with fractions. If it isn't 1/2 or 1/4, she just can't understand it.
Any ideas? Any suggestions? Any helpful sites or programs or exercises? She is quite frustrated!

[Lily]

Hope, we use the Math U See program for my son and it's working very well. It's expensive (I think Epsilon would run about $100 for all the parts new, though the teacher's manual/dvd and the fraction overlays can be bought cheaply on swap sites), but it is well worth it for the amount of understanding a child gets from it.

There's also online places like:
http://www.rainforestmaths.com/
http://www.internet4classrooms.com/skills_7th_math.htm
http://www.mathcats.com/grownupcats/ide ... tions.html


Hope that helps!

[charles]

Cut fruit with her and show her how fraction work. Show her how eighths work and how 4/8 is the same as one half.
Then show her how to calculate fractions of numbers. eg 3/8 of 48 is just 3x48 then divided by 8. Give her lots of examples until she sees the pattern for herself.
However if she does have a good grasp of number skills then you need to go back and revise before she tackles this. Without good nunber skills she'll always find it difficult.
Hope this helps.

[elliemaejune]

My 13 year old is having lots of trouble with fractions. If it isn't 1/2 or 1/4, she just can't understand it.

Any ideas? Any suggestions? Any helpful sites or programs or exercises? She is quite frustrated!

I found a very helpful set of fraction manipulatives at a local teacher supply store. It was similar to this set from ETA/Cuisenaire.

Maybe you can find something like this in your community. If not, you could order it from ETA/Cuisenaire.

[Shari Nielsen]

I got a set of Rainbow fraction tiles put out by Learning Resources and it really helped. Kids can easily see the relationship between the denominator and the size of the fraction as they physically manipulate the pieces. I recommend it.

[mbark]

Shodor has many very cool and userful interactive lessons for fractions. This is just one of them

http://www.shodor.org/interactivate/act ... ionFinder/