Fraction Talks

Fraction talks are a wonderful routine to inspire creative conversations about fractions, centered around carefully crafted visual prompts. We believe, it works best when you center the student’s thinking, and use questions to draw out their understanding. Drawing and coloring on the designs is also fun and highly recommended!

Part of what makes them so powerful is how sometimes the same fraction talk that can be used to introduce basic fraction concepts, can be used to introduce infinity and even calculus. That’s the ultimate “low floor, high ceiling” task, a task that all your students can get started on and all of your students can find challenges and surprises!

How to Begin a Fraction Talk

We start by centering the student’s thinking.

For example, one could begin by simply asking something like…

“What do you notice/wonder/see?”

Give them some time to think, possibly draw on the images, and/or pair share.

Then listen.

As you listen to how they see the image, ask them questions like “how do you know?”

Where possible try to annotate the image with what they are describing.

Suspending judgment and asking “how do you know?” oftentimes reveals important information about how your student(s) understand the concepts.

The magic happens when you can use something your student notices, but can’t fully describe yet, as the seed for building new language and concepts.

For example, they see that three of something makes up the whole, and you respond with “Yes, and one out of three is called a third and is written like this…”

If your student(s) are struggling with finding a particular fraction, its often helpful to reframe their thinking by asking “How many of these would fit into the total shape?” or “How many of these would fit into a shape you already know the fraction for?”

Lately, we’ve really enjoyed dropping fraction talk images into Google Jamboards so both students and teachers can annotate on the images as they discuss their thinking. Here are some examples…

Joyful Mathematics Fraction Talks

We’ve compiled some of our favorite fraction talks on a Jamboard, and curated some into galleries below. We would like to continue designing more and add to our collections.

Basic Fraction Talks

These are a good place to start if you are just introducing fraction talks, or if your students are new to the concept of fractions.

Fractal Fraction Talks

These fraction talks allow students to explore the surprising and beautiful world of repeated patterns, also known as Fractal Geometry! We’ve used these to inspire conversations about infinity, series, decimals in alternate bases, and even fractional dimensions!

Challenge Fraction Talks

For the more seasoned fraction talkers, we get a bit more creative with our prompts.

Want More Fraction Talks?

We were inspired to make our own set of fraction talks after years of using ones created by the likes of @NatBanting and @MathforLove. You can find some more examples at their sites: fractiontalks.com and mathforlove.com.

Looking for More Ways to Make Math Visual and Fun?

Check out these two games we made build on visual representations of multiplication and factors that are sure to spark joyful mathematics!

MULTI embeds the multiples of 1-9 into an Ultimate tic-tac-toe board. The tabletop edition showcases the array model for each multiple, while the print and play gives you the option to play with arrays or factorization diagrams. Its simple to learn, yet deep and interesting to master.

Numeroso Cards showcase the factorization diagrams for 1-52, with primes getting a rainbow band to make them easy to spot. We’ve designed a collection of games to keep you entertained for hours. Our latest game is loads of fun, takes 1-minute to learn, and about 5 minutes to play, with rich strategy tied to common factors. It’s so fun, you’ll want to play again and again! We recently wrote a blog about this new game: Why You'll Fall in Love with Number Nexus: The Perfect Game for Every Age!