Fraction Bars
Use this interactive online fraction bars tool to help students visualize and understand fractions. This free fraction bars tool is great for exploring fractions through operations, equivalent fractions, and modeling.
To use the tool, press the arrows to change the numerator and denominator. As you do so, the fraction bar below will adjust to represent the fraction visually. Once you’ve chosen your fraction, you can click, drag, and drop it onto the chart above. To remove fraction bars from the chart, click and drag them off. Or, you can simply put another fraction bar on top of the others. Conveniently, the colors of the bars change to make comparing the fractions easy.
Wondering how to use the online fraction bars too? Here are some ideas:
- Ask students to display a fraction and put it on the chart as a fraction bar (ie. 1/2). Then, ask students to display an equivalent fraction bar (ie. 2/4).
- Ask students to model operations involving fractions.
- Invite students to compare fractions by displaying various different ones on the chart. Which fractions show more than half? Which show less than half? Which show more than a quarter?
