Equivalent Fractions Card Sort Activity

Today I’m sharing an equivalent fractions card sort activity I recently created.

My Math Concepts students are currently working through a self-paced review of all things fractions. One key skill for my students to wrap their minds around is the idea of equivalent fractions. Proof this skill is important: I still have students in my Algebra 1 classes asking me to explain why we replaced 2/4 with 1/2 in our equation.

To give my students plenty of practice with this skill and time to discover some of the patterns between equivalent fractions on their own, I decided to type up a set of cards to be used as a card sort.

My deck of cards consisted of every single proper fraction (51 of them) that can be made using the sets of fraction tiles from EAI Education. Each student has a set of these tiles thanks to a generous grant from my school district’s education foundation. They have proven to be an amazing resource.

In groups of 2 or 3, students worked together using their fraction tiles as a reference to place the cards in piles where each fraction in the pile is equivalent.

Two of my three groups did this efficiently and only with minor mistakes.

My third group really struggled with staying focused on this activity and taking it seriously. After an entire class period, they had not finished the activity. Since we’re working through this unit at our own individual rates, this meant that this group could not move on to the later activities until this card sort was finished.

It was interesting to see each group take a different approach to matching up the equivalent fractions.

Some groups were very methodical. Others took a more haphazard approach.

Overall, I think this activity was worthwhile. I wanted to have them make more connections to what makes various fractions equivalent to one another, but this didn’t go as planned since one group did not finish in the allotted time.

In the future, I would make several tweaks to this activity. I would have students assemble the equivalent fractions along a number line made of masking tape on the floor. I also would take the blank fraction cards and have students create their own equivalent fractions to add to each group.