Year 3 maths query

[Whitchiteegrub]

Good evening

I am not sure if this will have a generic answer or whether the answer will depend on what method individual schools teach. My child is struggling with fractions in maths, and also division. She is in year 3. There seem several different methods I can use to help her to work them out but she looks blank when I ask her if the way I’m showing her is the way she learns them at school. Fraction wise an example she gave me is 2/3 of 12. I can obviously get to the answer but am not sure the correct way to show her. I can ask her teacher when back at school after Easter but wanted to try and get in some extra practice for her before she goes back. Division she gave me a sum of 38/3 , obviously this doesn’t work out exactly so I’m not sure if she is only working out sums that exactly divide at the moment and or whether she has given me a bad example but would the bus stop method be used for this? Help! Please!

We don't teach bus stop method in Year 3. 38 divided by 3 would be partitioned into 30 and 8. 30/3 is 10 and then 8 would be 2 r 2 to get the answer 12r2.

2/3 of 12 would be 12/3 is 4, then x2 is 8.

Hi, you should just focus on timetables in this stage! A child who is confident in timetables can do these franctions easier. Also make sure that she knows what makes 12 etc?

2/3 of 12
4+4+4=12 or 3x4=12 / 4x3=12

For division the timetable also has vital role. For example : 38/3 if she knows that 3x12= makes 36 and 3x13=39 than she can get the answer easier without doing any calculation with pen and paper and the answer is actually 12.6 but I dont think year 3s learn how to divide a number with remainders in year 3 curriculum.

If I dont remember wrong by end of year 3 - students needs to be confident in 1,2,3,4,5,10 and 8 timetables.

I hope that helps! ☺️

I haven't a scooby on this (about 20 years out of date!) but would BBC Bitesize help?

Yes agree with above. Definitely work on knowing times tables and mental calculations. I'd use picture representations for fractions e.g. choc bar cut into 3 equal pieces. Create a fraction wall by folding paper.

We teach fractions as being parts of a whole. For example 2/3 would be to look at 2 out of 3 equal parts.

To work out 2/3 of 12 I would encourage my class to first divide 12 into thirds (three equal groups) and then count how many were in two of them.

You can do this by practically using coins/pasta/sweets and then move onto drawing to represent what you've done practically.

To draw it out, you can draw 12 little circles in a line and 3 larger circles underneath. One by one, draw one of the 12 little circles into the larger circles making sure each larger circle always has an equal amount in.

Eg.
Big Circle 1 = draw 1 small circle
Big circle 2 = draw 1 small circle
Big circle 3 = draw 1 small circle
Does each group contain an equal amount? Continue until you have drawn all of the 12 small circles one by one into the large circles (each big circle contains 4 small circles).

You can then see that 2/3 of the 3 groups that make the whole (12) is 8.

I hope that makes sense. I teach Y2.

I always use BBC Bitesize for things like this. Google fractions and the year group. I tend to play my son the short videos then I don't have to teach him (he doesn't like listening to me!)

For fractions divide by the last / bottom number and then multiply by the first / top number.