GED Math Help- Small Group Instruction

One GED math help concept I taught this week was on reducing fractions.  Some students had difficulty understanding the idea of divisibility rules (for 2, 3, 5, and 10).  We went through many problems and many of them were still confused. 

I taught the concept of finding common factors.... and choosing the greatest common factors.... or at least using a common factor.  They were still confused.

Until one student said," When I was in school (way back when...) they told us to think about splitting the number in halves or thirds."

That the students understood. So we practiced the idea of "can we split BOTH numbers evenly in half, in thirds, in fifths, in tenths.  They finally understood reducing AND they understood that in simplifying a fraction such as 4/6 they were indeed dividing it by 2/2.

Be open to what your students have to say.  This "method" of teaching reducing fractions is something that I know I will use again.

reducing fraction worksheets