Fractions Task Cards – Simplifying and Equivalents

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Know Your Fractions – Simplifying and Equivalents are task cards designed to provide students with opportunities to improve their understanding of a range of fractional concepts.

Simplifying fractions is an important step and time needs to be invested to allow students the chance to build their confidence to do so fluently. Likewise, the ability to recognize an equivalent fraction quickly and easily is a skill that takes practice.

The student with a developed ability to simplify fractions and recognize and calculate equivalents with fluency will ensure more complex fractional concepts introduced in high school are met with an established confidence.

As students work through the questions, they also develop a greater understanding of the variety of ways a fraction can be visually represented. This requires a higher level of thinking than simply continuing to use the same visual representation.

While setting an overall time limit is useful, it is important not to overstress time and urgency as students require a slightly deeper concentration to work properly and should be encouraged to work at the pace that works for them.

The fractional concepts used for simplifying and finding an equivalent include:

• Fraction with a numerator and denominator
• Parts of a whole
• Number Line
• In words
• Fraction of a group

Although these cards are commonly used as task cards, they have also been used successfully in math centers or rotations.

This resources contains:

• 19 cards (18 task cards & 1 title card)
• A total of 36 questions (18 for simplifying & 18 for finding an equivalent)
• Student recording sheet
• Answer key
• Complete PDF and individual PNG files of the cards also included

Instructions:

• Print, laminate and cut the individual cards. (p. 2-6)
• Print student sheet (p. 7) and provide each student with a worksheet
• Distribute the cards around the room (or allocate your desired number of cards for use in a math rotation or center). Students may start at any number and work their way through in any order, but it is helpful to remind students to write the answer in the same numbered answer box i.e., if they are on card number 12, they should write their answer in answer box number 12
• Check answers

Enjoy!