You made it to the home stretch of the school year! Summer break is oh-so-close, but it can often feel daunting to fill the final days with meaningful work, especially if your students have already completed exams and standards-based testing.
But filler activities can serve a great purpose! Before you say goodbye to students and close down your classroom for the months away, utilize the extra time you have to solidify student knowledge, review concepts, and have fun with math.
End-of-year fractions: Fun and relevant filler activities to extend learning
The end of the school year is a great time to circle back to a crucial topic: fractions. Research has emphasized the importance of fractions competency in more advanced coursework, including algebra. In fact, knowledge of fractions at the end of grade 5 was identified as a strong and unique predictor of success many years later in high school math.
Learning sticks more when students can make connections and repeatedly access information. Extra time at the end of the year is a great way to support increased knowledge of fractions through review, practice, or advanced preparation for the year to come. No matter your students’ grade level or current levels of understanding, there are many end-of-year math activities that extend learning, reinforce concepts, and make fractions fun!
Revisiting fraction basics
When reviewing or teaching fractions, it’s critical to help students develop a conceptual understanding of concepts early since knowledge transfers from one year to the next. As the year wraps up, spend some time revisiting and developing these fraction fundamentals to fill in gaps in understanding while simultaneously getting students excited about the content they’ll encounter next school year.
- Foster strong number sense. Students must understand that fractions are numbers that can be rewritten in different forms. After grasping that fractions are numbers themselves, students will be much better prepared to work with fractions in various contexts rather than relying on memorized procedures.
- Reinforce fraction magnitude (size). Help your class develop magnitude understanding by reviewing how a numerator and a denominator work together to create a single value (length). Once students understand fraction magnitude, they’ll be better suited to accurately compare fractions and perform other operations like adding and subtracting fractions.
- Incorporate number lines. Fractions can be much more intuitive for students when they interact with visual representations like length models and number lines. Research shows that fractions are easier to understand when presented with length models (blocks and number lines) rather than area models (such as circles, rectangles, and 1D shading).
End-of-year fraction projects
Incorporate engaging fraction project ideas to help your class apply their understanding of fractions foundations in creative ways. Here are some student project ideas to help review and solidify knowledge.
- Create a poster with examples of fractions in real life. Draw examples or find real-world pictures from magazines or the Internet.
- Design a dream house and determine the fraction of materials needed based on the total supplies available.
- Plan a road trip and identify different stopping points along the journey by locating fractions on a number line.
- Create a short skit that corrects a common misconception about fractions.
Engaging fraction and math activities
If you don’t have time for a lengthier project, there are still plenty of engaging fractions lessons and fun fractions activities to try in one class period.
- Get students moving with a human number line to identify fractions on a number line.
- Practice fractions outside with chalk by creating fraction blocks.
- Connect math with literacy. Have students write a short story incorporating fractions vocabulary or examples of fractions they encounter around the school building.
- Have a paper snowball fight and solve student-created fractions problems.
- Use game-based tools that adapt to each student’s needs for individualized and fun fractions practice. ExploreLearning Frax makes fractions feel like an adventure with game-driven challenges that meet students at their unique levels, whether they need to review the fundamentals or are ready to practice more advanced fractions work.
Solidify student math success with end-of-year fractions mastery
With Frax, students learn by doing as they progress through carefully scaffolded tasks while earning rewards for efforts and progress. The flexibility and support of this game-based tool allow all students to develop critical fractions skills before they arrive for the next school year.
How does Frax support end-of-year fractions practice?
Frax easily supports end-of-year lesson plans with easy-to-implement fractions practice. Here are a few specific examples of how Frax can reinforce and extend understanding during the last few weeks of school.
Frax makes fractions fun and keeps students engaged, excited, and on-task during the most high-energy time of the school year. Using Frax, students can head to the Sector Review Room to practice skills in an arcade-like environment. By answering questions correctly, students earn additional tokens they can spend in the store to personalize their spaceship cabins!
Frax saves you time and energy with pre-made offline resources. These printable activities allow you to extend learning and promote math discourse in group settings, perfect for those extra-chatty final weeks of school. Frax offline events are project-like, ideal for group work and end-of-year reviews. They can also be used to celebrate milestones!
- Captain's Checkpoints give students additional practice with skills learned in online Frax missions. These collaborative activities encourage teamwork, allow students to talk about fractions, and promote critical thinking skills as they apply fractions in new contexts.
- Frax also includes Quick Checks. These printable, brief questions help check for understanding in various classroom settings. Use them as exit tickets, task cards, prompts for math discussions, in a gallery walk around the classroom, or math stations.
Frax helps students develop a conceptual understanding of fractions in a short amount of time. After a few hours of Frax, students build foundational knowledge to serve them well in the upcoming school year. Throughout Frax, students strengthen their fraction number sense as they develop an awareness of fraction magnitude.
Students develop an understanding of fraction magnitude in Frax.
Frax also helps eliminate barriers often experienced when teaching fractions on a number line. Frax uses the number line as the central representation tool. As students complete Frax missions, they develop increased familiarity with fractions on a number line. This number line confidence serves as a critical building block for more complex fractions work students will encounter in the future.
Students work with fractions on a number line in Frax.
Try Frax to help your students experience fractions success before that final bell rings and welcomes the arrival of summer.
