Finding a quarter of an amount

What is a quarter?

A quarter is when something has been split into four equal parts.

You can find a quarter of a shape, measure or a quantity.

There are four quarters in a whole.

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Harry, Betty, Isma and Charlie want to share a pizza. How could they slice the pizza so they each get an equal piece?

There are four children so they need to cut it into four pieces.

If they cut the pizza like this, they will each get an equal piece, or a quarter.

Here are some apples. Can you count how many there are?

There are 8 apples in total.

To find a quarter, you have to split the 8 apples into 4 equal groups.

Can you see how the apples have been split into 4 equal parts?

Each of these parts represents one quarter.

Look at this bar model. This bar model has been divided into four equal parts. One part has been shaded.

So, you could say that this bar model shows one quarter.

You could also write this as a fraction, like this \( \frac{1}{4} \).

The number on the bottom shows you how many equal parts of the whole there are (4).

The number on top shows you how many parts you have (1).

Here are some different ways to represent or write one quarter.

Let's look at another example.

This time we will use some cubes and a bar model to help us.

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Here are 12 cubes. We are going to use them to work out what one-quarter of 12 is.
Image caption,
We can use this bar model to help us. This bar model has been divided in to four equal parts, or quarters.
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Now, let's share out the cubes equally between the four parts. First, let's put one cube in each part.
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Now let's add another to each part. There are still four cubes left...
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Let's share the remaining cubes out between the parts. You can see that there are 3 cubes in each part. So you can say that a quarter of 12 is 3.
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You could also show the bar model like this, with the cubes replaced by numbers.