In recent years ‘Partitioning the whole,’ is a term that has been increasingly used in primary maths. It means breaking a single shape or number into equal sized parts, such as thirds, quarters or tenths. The idea is to help children understand that a fraction is part of a whole and that all the parts can be added back together to make the whole. This, in turn, leads to an understanding of what happens when two fractions with the same denominator are added together.

Our new resources provide visual aids to help with this, especially the meaning of the bottom (denominator) and top (numerator) parts of the fraction.

Fractions is a tricky topic, but we have a superb range of over 50 sets of pages plus tutorials and on-screen activities to help children. Well worth a look.