Some remarks on the teaching of

fractions in elementary school

H. Wu
Department of Mathematics #3840
University of California, Berkeley
Berkeley, CA 94720-3840
USA
http://www.math.berkeley.edu/∼wu/

[email protected]

It is widely recognized that there are at least two major bottlenecks in

the mathematics education of grades K–8: the teaching of fractions and the
introduction of algebra. Both are in need of an overhaul. I hope to make
a contribution to the former problem by devising a new approach to elevate
teachers’ understanding of fractions. The need for a better knowledge of
fractions among teachers has no better illustration than the the following
story related by Herbert Clemens (1995):

Last August, I began a week of fractions classes at a workshop

for elementary teachers with a graph paper explanation of why
2
7
÷ 19 = 2 47 . The reaction of my audience astounded me. Several
of the teachers present were simply terrified. None of my protes-
tations about this being a preview, none of my “Don’t worry”
statements had any effect.

This situation cries out for improvement.

Through the years, there has been no want of attempts from the mathe-
matics education community to improve on the teaching of fractions (Lamon
1999, Bezuk-Cramer 1989, Lappan Bouck 1989, among others), but much
0
October 18, 1999

1
 2

work remains to be done. In analyzing these attempts and the existing

school texts on fractions, one detects certain persistent problematic areas in
both the theory and practice, and they can be briefly described as follows:

(1) The concept of a fraction is never clearly defined in all of K–

12.
(2) The conceptual complexities associated with the common us-
age of fractions are emphasized from the beginning at the expense
of the underlying mathematical simplicity of the concept.
(3) The rules of the four arithmetic operations seem to be made
up on an ad hoc basis, unrelated to the usual four operations on
positive integers with which students are familiar.
(4) In general, mathematical explanations of essentially all aspects
of fractions are lacking.

These four problems are interrelated and are all fundamentally mathe-
matical in nature. For example, if one never gives a clearcut definition of a
fraction, one is forced to “talk around” every possible interpretation of the
many guises of fractions in daily life in an effort to overcompensate. A good
example is the over-stretching of a common expression such as “a third of a
group of fifteen people” into a main theme in the teaching of fractions (Moy-
nahan 1996). Or, instead of offering mathematical explanations to children
of why the usual algorithms are logically valid—a simple task if one starts
from a precise definition of a fraction,—algorithms are justified through ”con-
nections among real-world experiences, concrete models and diagrams, oral
language, and symbols (p. 181 of Huinker 1998; see also Lappan & Bouck
1998 and Sharp 1998). It is almost as if one makes the concession from the
start: “We will offer everything but the real thing”.
Let us look more closely at the way fractions are introduced in the class-
room. Children are told that a fraction dc , with positive integers c and d, is
simultaneously at least five different objects (cf. Lamon 1999 and Reys et al.
1998):

(a) parts of a whole: when an object is equally divided into d

parts, then dc
denotes c of those d parts.
(b) the size of a portion when an object of size c is divided into
d equal portions.
(c) the quotient of the integer c divided by d.
 3

(d) the ratio of c to d.

(e) an operator: an instruction that carries out a process, such
as “ 23 of”.
It is quite mystifying to me how this glaring “crisis of confidence” in fractions
among children could have been been consistently overlooked. Clearly, even
those children endowed with an overabundance of faith would find it hard to
believe that a concept could be so versatile as to fit all these descriptions.
More importantly, such an introduction to a new topic in mathematics is
contrary to every mode of mathematical exposition that is deemed accept-
able by modern standards. Yet, even Hans Freudenthal, a good mathemati-
cian before he switched over to mathematics education, made no mention
of this central credibility problem in his Olympian ruminations on fractions
(Freudenthal 1983). Of the existence of such crisis of confidence there is no
doubt. In 1996, a newsletter for teachers from the mathematics department
of the University of Rhode Island devoted five pages of its January issue to
“Ratios and Rational Numbers” ([3]). The editor writes:
This is a collection of reactions and responses to the following
note from a newly appointed teacher who wishes to remain anony-
mous:
“On the first day of my teaching career, I defined a rational num-
ber to my eighth grade class as a number that can be expressed
as a ratio of integers. A student asked me: What exactly are
ratios? How do ratios differ from fractions? I gave some answers
that I was not satisfied with. So I consulted some other teachers
and texts. The result was confusion . . . ”
This is followed by the input of many teachers as well as the editor on this
topic, each detailing his or her inconclusive findings after consulting existing
texts and dictionaries (!). In a similar vein, Lamon (1999) writes: “As one
moves from whole number into fraction, the variety and complexity of the
siutation that give meaning to the symbols increases dramatically. Under-
standing of rational numbers involves the coordination of many different but
interconnected ideas and interpretations. There are many different meanings
that end up looking alike when they are written in fraction symbol” (pp. 30–
31). All the while, students are told that no one single idea or interpretation
is sufficiently clear to explain the “meaning” of a fraction. This is akin to
telling someone how to get to a small town by car by offering fifty sugges-
tions on what to watch for each time a fork in the road comes up and how
 4

to interpret the road signs along the way, when a single clearly drawn road
map would have done a much better job. Given these facts, is it any wonder
that Lappan-Bouck (1998) and Lamon (1999) would lament that students
“do” fractions without any idea of what they are doing? For example, it is
certainly difficult to learn how to add two “operators” in the sense of (e).
Sometimes one could “get by” a mathematical concept without a pre-
cise definition if its rules of operation are clearly explained. Conjecturally,
that was how Europeans in the 14th and 15th centuries dealt with negative
numbers. In the case of fractions, however, this is not true even when inter-
pretation (b) of fractions is used. The worst case is the rule of adding two
fractions. In book after book (with very few exceptions, such as Lang (1988)),
a
b
+ dc is defined as (pa + cq)/m, where m = lcm{b, d} and m = bp = cq. Now
at least two things are wrong with this definition. First, it turns off many
students because they cannot differentiate between lcm and gcd. This def-
inition therefore sets up an entirely unnecesary roadblock in students’ path
of learning. Second, from a mathematical point of view, this definition is se-
riously flawed because it tacitly implies that without the concept of the lcm
of two integers, fractions cannot be added. If we push this reasoning another
step, we would arrive at the absurd conclusion that unless an integral domain
has the unique factorization property, its quotient field cannot be defined.
Informal surveys among teachers consistently reveal that many of their
students simply give up learning fractions at the point of the introduction of
addition. It is probably not just a matter of being confused by gcd and lcm,
but more likely a feeling of bewilderment and disgust at being forced to learn
a new way of doing addition that seems to bear no relation to the addition of
whole numbers. This then brings us to the problem area (3) at the beginning
of this article. We see, for example, that Bezuk and Cramer (1989) willingly
concede that “Children must adopt new rules for fractions that often conflict
with well-established ideas about whole number” (p.156). In mathematics,
one of the ultimate goals is to achieve simplicity. In the context of learning,
it is highly desirable, perhaps even mandatory, that we convey this message
of simplicity to students. However, when we tell students that something
as simple as the addition of two numbers is different for whole numbers and
fractions, we are doing them a great disservice. Even when students are
willing to suspend disbelief and go along on such a weird journey, they pay a
dear price. Indeed, there are recurrent reports of students at the University of
California at Berkeley and at Stanford University claiming in their homework
and exam papers that ab + ac = b+c a
and ab + dc = a+c
b+d
.
 5

All in all, a mathematician approaching the subject of fractions in school

mathematics cannot help but be struck by the total absence of the charac-
teristic features of mathematics: precise definitions as starting point, logical
progression from topic to topic, and most importantly, explanations that
accompany each step. This is not to say that the teaching of fractions in
elementary school should be rigidly formal from the beginning. Fractions
should be informally introduced as early as the second grade (because even
second graders need to worry about drinking “half a glass” of orange juice!),
and there is no harm done in allowing children to get acquainted with frac-
tions in an intuitive manner up to, say, the fourth grade. An analogy may be
helpful here. The initial exploration of fractions may be taken as the “data-
collecting phase” of a working scientist: just take it all in and worry about
the meaning later. In time, however, the point will be reached when the said
scientist must sit down to organize and theorize about his or her data. So
it is that when students reach the fifth grade ([2]) or the sixth grade ([1]),
their mathematical development cannot go forward unless “miracles” such
as having one object dc enjoying the five different properties of (a)–(e) above
are fully explained, and rules such as ab / dc = adbc
justified. And it at this
critical juncture of students’ mathematical education that I hope to make a
contribution.
The work done on the teaching of fractions thus far has come mainly
from the education community. Perhaps because of the recent emphasis on
situated learning, fractions tend to be discussed at the source, in the sense
that attention is invariably focussed on the interpretation of fractions in a
“real world” setting. Since fractions are used in many contexts in many
ways, students are led through myriad interpretations of a fraction from the
beginning in order to get some idea of what a fraction is. At the end, a
fraction is never defined and so the complexities tend to confuse rather than
clarify (cf. (2) at the beginning of the article). More to the point, such an
approach deprives students the opportunity to learn about an essential aspect
of doing mathematics: when confronted with complications, try to abstract
in order to achieve understanding. Students’ first serious encounter with the
computation of fractions may be the right moment in the school curriculum
to turn things around by emphasizing its abstract, simple component and
make the abstraction the center of classroom instruction. By so doing, one
would also be giving students a substantial boost in their quest for learning
algebra. The ability to abstract, so essential in algebra, should be taught
as early as possible in the school curriculum, which would mean during the
 6

teaching of fractions. By giving abstraction its due in teaching fractions, we

would be easing students’ passage to algebra as well.
It takes no insight to conclude that two things have to happen if mathe-
matics education in K-8 is to improve: there must be textbooks that treats
fractions logically, and teachers must have the requisite mathematical knowl-
edge to guide their students through this rather sophisticated subject. I
propose to take up the latter problem by writing a monograph to improve
teachers’ understanding of fractions.
The first and main objective of this monograph is to give a treatment
of fractions and decimals for teachers of grades 5–8 which is mathematically
correct in the sense that everything is explained and the explanations are
sufficiently elementary to be understood by elementary school teachers. In
view of what has already been said above, an analogy may further explain
what this monograph hopes to accomplish. Imagine that we are mounting an
exhibit of Rembrandt’s paintings, and a vigorous discussion is taking place
about the proper lighting to use and the kind of frames that would show
off the paintings to best advantage. Good ideas are also being offered on
the printing of a handsome catalogue for the exhibit and the proper way
to publicize the exhibit in order to attract a wider audience. Then someone
takes a closer look at the paintings and realizes that all these good ideas might
go to waste because some of the paintings are fakes. So finally people see the
need to focus on the most basic part of the exhibit—the paintings—before
allowing the exhibit to go public. In like manner, what this monograph tries
to do is to call attention to the need of putting the mathematics of fractions
in order before lavishing the pedagogical strategies and classroom activities
on the actual teaching.
An abbreviated draft of the part of the monograph on fractions is already
in existence (Wu 1998). The main point of the latter can be summarized as
follows.

(i) It gives a complete, self-contained mathematical treatment of

fractions that explains every step logically.
(ii) It starts with the definition of a fraction as a number (a point
on the number line, to be exact), and deduces all other common
properies ascribed to fractions (cf. (a)–(e) above) from this defi-
nition alone.
(iii) It explicitly and emphatically restores the simple and correct
definition of the addition of two fractions (i.e., ab + dc = ad+bc
bd
).
 7

(iv) The four arithmetic operations of fractions are treated as ex-

tensions of what is already known about whole numbers. This
insures that learning fractions is similar to learning the mathe-
matics of whole numbers.
(v) On the basis of this solid mathematical foundation for frac-
tions, precise explanations of the commonly used terms such as
“17 percent of”, “three-fifths of”, “ratio”, and “proportional to”
are now given.
(vi) The whole treatment is elementary and, in particular, is ap-
propriate for grades 5–8. In other words, it eschews any gratu-
itous abstractions.

In the eighteen months since Wu (1998) was written, I have gotten to

know more about the culture of elementary school teachers and have come to
understand better their needs. I have also gotten to know, quite surprisingly,
that there are objections to a logically coherent mathematical treatment of
fractions in grades 5–8 by a sizable number of educators. This objection
would seem to be grounded on a misunderstanding of the basic structure
of mathematics. There are also some gaps in the treatment of Wu (1998).
All this new information must be fully incorporated into the forthcoming
monograph. More specifically, the envisioned expansion will address the
following areas:
(a) Discuss in detail from the beginning the pros and cons of the
usual “discrete” models of fractions, such as pies and rectangles,
versus the number line. Special emphasis will be placed on the
pedagogical importance of point (iv) above. Such a discussion
would address the concerns of many school teachers and educa-
tors who are used to having “models” for an abstract concept
and have difficulty distinguishing between the number line as a
model for fraction and its use as a definition which underlies the
complete logical development of fractions.
(b) Explain carefully that at a certain point of elementary ed-
ucation, a mathematical concept should be given one definition
and then have all other properties must be deduced from this
definition by logical deductions. This need is not generally rec-
ognized in the education community. For fractions, the point in
question would seem to be reached in the fifth grade ([2]) or sixth
 8

grade ([1]). Whether such logical deductions are properly taught

is likely to determine whether the learning of fractions is an im-
mense aid or obstacle to the learning of algebra later on.
(c) More clearly delineate which part of the exposition primarily
addresses teachers, and which part could be directly used in the
classroom. Early readers of Wu (1998) have been to known to
complain that “no student in the fifth grade could understand
the algebraic notation”, without realizing it was a document for
teachers.
(d) Add a treatment of negative fractions and complete the dis-
cussion of the rational number system.
(e) Add a treatment of decimals and the relationship between
decimals and fractions. Emphasis will be placed on a precise
definition of decimals and the logical explanations of the com-
mon properties of decimals, viz., why fractions are the same as
repeating decimals, and which fractions have finite decimal rep-
resentations.
(f) Add a discussion of the role of calculators. Although calcu-
lators already appear in the exercises at the end of §3 and §4 in
Wu (1998), there is need of a discursive and direct discussion of
this important issue.
(g) Amplify on the brief discussion of ratio and proportion in Wu
(1998). Carefully explain the unfortunate historical origin of the
concept of “ratio” in Euclid’s Elements which has led to immense
and unnecessary confusion about what it means. Clarify the con-
cept of so-called “proportional thinking” which has been treated
with unwarranted reverence in the literature.
(h) Add generous pedagogical comments on how to deliver such
an approach to fractions in the classroom.
(j) Expand on the rather terse expository style of Wu (1998), ev-
erywhere. In particular more exercises and more examples are
needed.

Thus Wu (1998) will have to be fleshed out in a substantial way, and

its vision has to be sharpened. More importantly, to ensure its usefulness
as a resource for professional development, it is essential that it be tested
on teachers before it is finalized. Perhaps a draft of this mongraph can be
put into service in some professional development activities in the coming
 9

months.

References

[1] Principles and Standards for School Mathematics, Discussion Draft.

(1999). Reston, VA: National Council of Teachers of Mathematics.

[2] Mathematics Framework for California Public Schools, (1999). Sacra-

mento, CA: California Department of Education.

[3] Creative Math Teaching in Grades 7–12 (Newsletter of the Mathe-

matics Department of the University of Rhode Island), (1996). Volume 2,
Number 1, 1–5.

Bezuk, N. & Cramer, K. (1989) Teaching about fractions: what, when

and how? In: New Directions for Elementary School Mathematics. Trafton,
P. R. & Schulte, A. P. (editors) Reston, VA: National Council of Teachers of
Mathematics.

Clements, Herb. (1995) Can university math people contribute signifi-

cantly to precollege mathematics education (beyond giving future teachers a
few preservice math courses)? In: Changing the Culture: Mathematics Edu-
cation in the Research Community, Fisher, N D., Keynes, H. B. & Wagreich,
P. D., (editors). Providence, RI: American Mathematical Society, 55-59.

Freudenthal, Hans. (1983) Didactic Phenomenology of Mathematical Struc-

tures. Boston, MA: Kluwer.

Huinker, De Ann. (1998) Letting fraction algorithms emerge through

problem solving. In: The Teaching and Learning of Algorithms in School
Mathematics. Morow, L. J. & Kenny, M. J. (editors). Reston, VA: National
Council of Teachers of Mathematics.

Lamon, Susan J. (1999) Teaching Fractions and Ratios for Understand-

ing. Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates.
 10

Lang, Serge (1988) Basic Mathematics. New York, NY: Springer-Velag.

Lappan, Glenda & Bouck, Mary K. (1998) Developing algorithms for

adding and subtracting fractions. In: The Teaching and Learning of Al-
gorithms in School Mathematics. Morow, L. J. & Kenny, M. J. (editors).
Reston, VA: National Council of Teachers of Mathematics.

Moynahan, J. (1996) Of-ing fractions. In: What is happening in Math

Class? Schifter, Deborah (editor). New York, NY: Teachers College Press.

Reys, R. E. et al. (1998) Helping Children Learn Mathematics. 5th edi-

tion. Boston, MA: Allyn and Bacon.

Sharp, Janet (1998) A constructed algorithm for the division of fractions.

In: The Teaching and Learning of Algorithms in School Mathematics. Mo-
row, L. J. & Kenny, M. J. (editors) Reston, VA: National Council of Teachers
of Mathematics.

Wu, H. (1998) Teaching fractions in elementary school: A manual for

teachers.
http://math.berkeley.edu/∼wu

Department of Mathematics #3840, University of California, Berkeley,

CA 94720-3840 wu@@math.berkeley.edu