New Fractions, Decimals and Percentages

Fractions, decimals and percentages are some of the most challenging areas of the new primary curriculum. Not only are children introduced to concepts earlier, but they are also covered in greater depth, with higher expectations overall. Many teachers find them challenging to teach and pupils often have a limited or only partially developed understanding of the topics.

A major reason children struggle with fractions, decimals and percentages, is the variety of contexts and representations in which they appear – for example, as areas, as sets, on number lines, as a result of a division problem and in relation to measurements. That’s why we’ve created a new whole-school resource, Fractions, Decimals and Percentages, that explores these topics in all their different guises, so that pupils develop a deep, secure and adaptable understanding of them.

Teaching for mastery

Fully aligned to the new curriculum, the programme includes six pupil books and six teacher's guides - one for each primary school year - and supports a mastery approach to teaching mathematics. The essential idea behind mastery is that all children are given full access to the curriculum, enabling them to achieve the fluency, confidence and competence on which future mathematical learning is build. There are a number of ways that mastery resources like Fractions, Decimals and Percentages do this, including:  

• breaking topics down into a sequence of small steps that build on prior learning and avoid gaps in understanding
• ensuring that pupils move at the same pace through the units and are given the same opportunity to succeed
• developing procedural fluency and conceptual understanding at the same time
• identifying misconceptions as soon as they arise and intervening early so that pupils don’t fall behind
• challenging pupils who grasp concepts rapidly to explore ideas in greater depth instead of moving on to a new topic.

Time-saving lesson plans

The six Fractions, Decimals and Percentages teacher’s guides lie at the heart of the programme and contain everything you need to teach the National Curriculum requirements for these tricky subjects, including lesson plans with scripted questions and supporting Graphics, answers to all the questions in the corresponding pupil book and a range of assessment and record keeping resources. 

All the lessons are intended for use with the whole class and follow a consistent four-part structure, comprising:

1. Starting point – clear guidance on how to introduce each learning point with accompanying Graphics to guide pupils’ understanding

2. Spot the mistake – a short statement featuring a mistake which is commonly made with the concept being taught

3. Good to go? – a quick check to help you assess whether pupils have understood the lesson and are ready to progress

4. Pupil book practice – guidance on potential areas of difficulty in the practice questions and suggestions for follow-up activities.

Intelligent practice

Each Fractions, Decimals and Percentages pupil book features carefully structured practice activities that directly correspond to the lessons provided in the supporting teacher’s guide. Each unit is set across a double-page spread that begins with a child-friendly summary of the key learning point before progressing to three sets of practice questions, ranging from quick teasers that help pupils gain confidence to more challenging problems that build conceptual understanding and reasoning skills.

Each pupil book also contains two Check-up tests that can be used to monitor children’s understanding of the material covered in the preceding unit and a separate Final test, enabling you to assess how securely pupils have grasped the concepts covered in each year. Other features include a self-evaluation checklist that encourages pupils to rate how they found each unit and a Glossary to develop children’s knowledge of formal mathematical language.

Free online resources 

As well as the materials in the teacher’s guides and pupil books, Fractions, Decimals and Percentages also offers a range of free online resources, including Go deeper investigations to challenge those pupils who are ready to delve even more deeply into the concepts being taught, and PowerPoint® slides containing the visual elements from each unit. You can access all of these resources via the Free downloads page of the website.

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