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Important update from TheSchoolRun

For the past 13 years, TheSchoolRun has been run by a small team of mums working from home, dedicated to providing quality educational resources to primary school parents. Unfortunately, rising supplier costs and falling revenue have made it impossible for us to continue operating, and we’ve had to make the difficult decision to close. The good news: We’ve arranged for another educational provider to take over many of our resources. These will be hosted on a new portal, where the content will be updated and expanded to support your child’s learning.

What this means for subscribers:

  • Your subscription is still active, and for now, you can keep using the website as normal — just log in with your usual details to access all our articles and resources*.
  • In a few months, all resources will move to the new portal. You’ll continue to have access there until your subscription ends. We’ll send you full details nearer the time.
  • As a thank you for your support, we’ll also be sending you 16 primary school eBooks (worth £108.84) to download and keep.

A few changes to be aware of:

  • The Learning Journey weekly email has ended, but your child’s plan will still be updated on your dashboard each Monday. Just log in to see the recommended worksheets.
  • The 11+ weekly emails have now ended. We sent you all the remaining emails in the series at the end of March — please check your inbox (and spam folder) if you haven’t seen them. You can also follow the full programme here: 11+ Learning Journey.

If you have any questions, please contact us at [email protected]. Thank you for being part of our journey it’s been a privilege to support your family’s learning.

*If you need to reset your password, it will still work as usual. Please check your spam folder if the reset email doesn’t appear in your inbox.

What is the numerator?

Numerator
We explain what the numerator of a fraction is and give examples of how the concept might be taught in Key Stage 2, as well as explaining fractions equivalence and the relationship between the numerator and denominator.

What is the numerator?

The numerator is the top number of a fraction.



So in the fraction 3/8 the numerator is 3. In the fraction 1/9 the numerator is 1. 

If a fraction has 1 as its numerator, it is called a unit fraction.

Fractions notation in Year 3 maths

Children need to find one half, one quarter and three quarters of shapes in Year 2. 

In Year 3, they start using fraction notation (looking at the diagram below, writing 3/6 to express what they are seeing).

It is helpful for them to see diagrams so that they are aware that the numerator is the number of parts shaded (for example, in the fraction above, 3 parts out of 6).

Fractions equivalence

In Years 3 and 4, children learn about equivalence. They will look at diagrams like the following fractions equivalence wall:



and start to understand how fractions can be the same, even if they are split up into different numbers of parts, which give them different denominators.

They also need to look at the relationship between the numerator and denominator in equivalent fractions; for example, in the diagram below, they may notice that 2 is a third of 6 and 4 is a third of 12.



In Years 4, 5 and 6 children need to relate fractions to their decimal equivalents. 

To understand this, it is helpful for them to understand that decimals deal with whole numbers being split into one hundred equal parts, so a decimal number can be compared to a fraction with 100 as the denominator. The number that occurs after the decimal point in a decimal number then forms the numerator of an equivalent fraction, for example: 0.41 is 41/100.

Children then need to be able to simplify fractions by dividing the numerator and denominator by the same number.

They may also be given a list of fractions with different denominators and asked to convert them so that they all have the same denominator. This involves either multiplying or dividing both the numerator and denominator by the same number.