Fractions Decimals Percents: EZ Cut 'n Paste Activities

Three different "EZ-CUT" and paste activities with fractions, decimals and percents.

Activity 1: Students cut out proper fractions and match them to equivalent terminating and non-terminating decimals. Some decimals are rounded to the nearest thousandth, others use a vinculum or ellipse to show that it repeats.

Activity 2: Students cut out proper and improper fractions and match to equivalent decimals, both terminating and non-terminating. Students round off to the nearest thousandth when necessary.

Activity 3: Students cut out proper fractions and match to percents, rounding off to the nearest tenth.

I’ve been looking at Pinterest an awful lot (you should see my Fraction Teaching Mistakes board, if you want to see what I think of how fractions are taught....) and while I think “cutting and pasting” is a fun task for kids to do (there’s only so much writing and tapping you can do), a lot of the activites I see are high on the cutting and pasting and very, very low on the actual mathematical thinking.

I looked at one activity which featured a full page activity that had about a dozen different questions. That seemed like a waste: an 8 1/2 x 11 sheet of paper has 93.5 square inches and you can only fit 12 problems on it? That’s 7.8 square inches for each problem! And then you look at how many cuts are needed to actually do the activity: if there are 12 different “pasties,” then 12 x 4 = 36, which means your students are going to spend a lot of time cutting, and not very much time thinking and pasting.

This is 3 activities for practicing fractions, percents and decimals that have been optimized so that your students will spend lots of time thinking, with a minimum of cutting AND maximum use of paper.

So here are the facts, Jack:

This activity has 24 different solutions that have to be placed: that’s 3.9 square inches per problem.

The cutouts have been strategically placed to be cut in a short amount of time: my students were able to cut out all 24 pieces using about 8 straight cuts. Some claimed that they did it in 6, but I don’t really believe it.....

There is a minimum of wasted paper that doesn’t get used in this activity that amounts to 5 square inches, or about 5% of the entire sheet. So much paper is wasted on cutesy clip art, fuggetaboutit!

You love your kids? Use this!
You love to waste time & paper? Don't use this!