Question Video: Recognizing the Shape of Nonunit Fractions for Halves, Thirds, and Quarters Mathematics

Video Transcript

Scarlett has shaded parts of the given whole. Complete the sentences. What out of four equal parts are shaded? What quarters of the whole is shaded?

In the picture, we can see a whole amount, and we’re told that Scarlett has shaded some parts of it. So what do you think the whole amount is that’s being talked about? It’s this whole rectangle here, isn’t it? And we can see that the whole of this long rectangle has been divided into one, two, three, four smaller rectangles. And they’re all the same size, aren’t they? They’re equal parts.

Now, we’ve got some sentences about these parts that we need to complete. But before we do that, let’s take a moment to look carefully what we’re being asked because we can make a prediction here. Our last missing number is the top number in a fraction. Now, we know that the top number in a fraction is called the numerator. Do you remember what this represents? It’s the number of parts that have been selected.

Well, in this particular question, we’re talking about shaded parts. So why don’t we change our definition? The numerator is the number of shaded parts. Now, if we come back up and look at our first missing number, we also need to write down the number of shaded parts, this time as a sentence. So even if we’d never seen this diagram, we’d be able to predict one thing. Our two missing numbers are going to be exactly the same, aren’t they?

Alright, let’s get answering this question. So our first sentence says, what out of four equal parts are shaded? One, two out of four equal parts are shaded. Now, because the whole amount has been divided into four equal parts, we know we’re talking about quarters. And that’s why the denominator or the bottom number in this fraction is four. Did you notice when we read the question we said “what quarters”? As we’ve said already, the missing number then is the numerator. The number of shaded parts is two. So we can say two-quarters of the whole is shaded. Two out of four equal parts are shaded. Two-quarters of the whole is shaded.