Fraction, Decimal, And Percent Strips

 

This past week when I was researching whether digital or physical manipulatives were better, I came across a lovely website that had tons of virtual manipulatives from geoboard and geoshapes to analog thermometers, to money.  In amongst the list, I found the usual fraction strips but right next to those, there were decimal strips and percent strips.  I felt like I had a light bulb go off in my head.  This is the first time I've ever seen 

The decimal and percent ones are set up the same way that the fraction strips are designed to work in the same way as fraction strips. The decimal one has strips for 1, .5, .25, .4, .3, .125, or .1 while the percentage manipulative has 100%, 50%, 25%, 40%, 30%, 20%, etc to. match up with fraction strips.  

When I saw these, I realized that I could easily use these to help students when they struggle to learn about equivalents between fractions, decimals, and percents.  Think about letting students taking a 1/2 fraction to line up with a .5 tile and a 50% tile.  They can physically see they are the same size so they'd know they were equivalent.  This is the same technique we use to show that 1/2 is the same as 2/4 or 4/8.  They line the tiles up and they can see they are the same lengths.  

I am not saying one should use all three at once but as students learn to convert fractions to decimals, they can use those two so that they see the relationships between each fraction and its equivalent decimal.  When they work on converting decimals to percents, they can use those two strips and they can use all three if they are looking at all three.

I wanted to find more information on this topic but there really isn't any that I could find. I found a lot on using fraction strips or decimal strips or percent strips, but very little on using either decimal or percentage strips. I also didn't find much at all on using fraction, decimal, or percent strips together. 

Unfortunately, This site only offers the strips individually, not together so you can't compare these virtually.  I also went looking for individual physical representations for fractions, decimals, and percents. I found lots of fraction strips, I found a few fraction and decimal strips that seem to be about half and half but I didn't find any percentage strips.

On their other hand, you can make your own.  It is possible to find blank fraction strips.  These can be printed on card stock and students can fill the values in for decimals or percents.  This way they have their own strips to use while they learn the concept rather than just memorizing the facts.  This may help student make the connections they need.

Since I'll be working with some 6th and 7th graders next year who will probably be light on the knowledge of what fraction equals what decimal and percent so this is a great way to help them.  Let me know what you think, I'd love to hear.  Have a great day.