Equivalence and Comparison of Fractions: Lesson 6

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Introduction

Depending on your class, you might remind students that if the letters used to represent numbers are different, the numbers could be different or the same.

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What can you say about the fractions $\frac{3}{a}$ and $\frac{3}{b}$ ? What can you say about the fractions $\frac{m}{12}$ and $\frac{n}{12}$ ?

Possible student responses

For the first two fractions, $\frac{3}{a}$ and $\frac{3}{b}$ , if a and b are equal (for example, $\frac{3}{7}$ and $\frac{3}{7}$ ), then that’s the same fraction.
If a and b are different, then the bigger the number is in the denominator, the smaller the piece.
If a is greater than b, the fraction $\frac{3}{a}$ is less than $\frac{3}{b}$ . The opposite is true for the other two fractions. This time a bigger numerator means a bigger fraction!

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Equivalence and Comparison of Fractions, #6

Introduction

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Possible student responses