Video Transcript
The given box can hold 10
counters. What fraction of the box is
filled? Write this fraction as a
decimal.
In the picture, we can see a box,
and we’re told that it can hold 10 counters. This box looks a little bit like a
10 frame, doesn’t it? Although we’re told it can hold 10
counters, we can see that it only contains three at the moment. Only part of the box is filled. And in the first part of the
question, we’re asked to write this as a fraction. What fraction of the box is
filled?
Well, if we draw our horizontal
line to begin with, we can start by completing the denominator, because we know that
the whole box has been split up into 10 parts. They’re all equal parts because
they can all contain one counter. So the denominator for our fraction
is going to be 10. We’re talking about a number of
tenths here. And the number of these 10 equal
spaces that are filled with counters is three. Our box contains three out of a
possible 10 counters. It’s three-tenths full.
You know, there’s another way we
could represent this amount because in the second part of our question, we’re told
to write this fraction as a decimal. We could use this place value table
to help us. We can’t see any whole boxes that
are full. So we need to put a zero in the
ones place. But we can see that three-tenths of
the box is full. And when we want to show a number
of tenths, we draw a little decimal point after the ones place. And we write the number of tenths
in the tenths place, which is the next place to the right, 0.3. When we see this, we can just say
three-tenths.
Now, as we look back at this
question, we can see a number of tenths shown in three different ways, firstly as a
model, as part of the question, then as a fraction, and finally as a decimal. And they all represent the same
value. The fraction of the box that’s
filled is three-tenths. And to write three-tenths as a
decimal, we simply write the digit zero, a decimal point, and then the digit three,
0.3.
