We use fractions of amounts in everyday life - from sharing food, to working out amounts of time and even splitting into groups for activities.

Finding fractions can be used for working out discounts when shopping, for example '\( \frac{1}{3} \) off'.

Or when cooking, for example knowing how much you need to make a recipe with 'half' the ingredients.

To find a fraction of an amount, you start by finding out what a part is within the whole. Then you look at how many parts you need.

It can be helpful to draw a bar model to represent the calculation.

Unit fractions have a numerator of 1, for example \( \frac{1}{3} \) or \( \frac{1}{4} \).

The denominator tells you how many sections the whole number bar needs to be split into.

For example, if you wanted to find \( \frac{1}{4} \) of 12, you would split a bar of 12 in to 4 equal parts.

Each of those parts represents \( \frac{1}{4} \) of 12, which you can see is 3.

\( \frac{1}{4} \) of 12 = 3

Non-unit fractions have a numerator greater than 1, for example \( \frac{2}{3} \) or \( \frac{3}{4} \).

So if we wanted to find \( \frac{2}{4} \) of 12, you would draw the same bar model, but then add up 2 parts.

Two parts represents\( \frac{2}{4} \) of 12, which is 6.

\( \frac{2}{4} \) of 12 = 6