Fractions with Smarties

Once again when teaching in maths, I love working with concrete materials!!! They allow students to work hands-on with their learning and grasp a concept more easily than just trying to understand it on paper.

To begin our unit on fractions, I had students do an investigation with Smarties. Geeze, they were excited about that!

Students were placed into groups and given a package of Smarties. They then had to find the fractions of each colour in the box. 

For example: The fraction of red Smarties in the box is 5/40. 

I gave very little instruction to the students other than telling them they needed to find the fractions of each colour. This worked well as I was able to rove around and see the different strategies students used to find their fractions. Some groups sorted all the Smarties into each colour first, while others counted the total number of Smarties first. This was definitely an exciting investigation for the children but also a good diagnostic to see who grasped the concept of fractions.