Developing Effective Fractions Instruction for Kindergarten through 8th Grade. IES Practice Guide. NCEE 2010-4039

This practice guide presents five recommendations intended to help educators improve students' understanding of, and problem-solving success with, fractions. Recommendations progress from proposals for how to build rudimentary understanding of fractions in young children; to ideas for helping older children understand the meaning of fractions and computations that involve fractions; to proposals intended to help students apply their understanding of fractions to solve problems involving ratios, rates, and proportions. Improving students' learning about fractions will require teachers' mastery of the subject and their ability to help students master it; therefore, a recommendation regarding teacher education also is included. Appendices include: (1) Postscript from the Institute of Education Sciences; (2) About the Authors; (3) Disclosure of Potential Conflicts of Interest; (4) Rationale for Evidence Ratings; and (5) Evidence Heuristic. A glossary and index are also provided. (Contains 5 tables, 10 figures, and 250 endnotes.)