Fraction Talks

I came across this problem a few years ago and love using it as a Warm Up. Hoo boy, does it elicit major misconceptions my middle school kids have about fractions. (Edit: These are called number searches. You can find more here!)

My 7th graders really struggled with it at first. I told them the dark blue rectangle was one whole and they just couldn’t wrap their head around it. Thinking of the lime green as a whole was more accessible so we ran with that. I love that it is open-ended and kids can take it to different depths.

It’s the only one I’ve found like it, so I’ve been itching to create my own. I came up with these:

I also created some more traditional fraction talk images, inspired by Nat Banting’s site, fractiontalks.com. He has great tips for implementing and extending fraction talks.

I’ve put them all into a google slideshow for easy use. After getting some feedback, I modified them to improve their accessibility for folks with colorblindness.

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