What instructional strategy can help students struggling with fractions to visualize the concepts?

Using visual aids such as pie charts or fraction bars is an effective instructional strategy for helping students who struggle with understanding fractions. Visual aids allow students to see the relationships and proportions that fractions represent, making abstract concepts more concrete. For instance, pie charts can illustrate how a whole is divided into equal parts, helping students visualize the concept of a fraction as a part of a whole. Fraction bars serve a similar purpose by providing a tangible representation of different fractions, allowing students to compare sizes and understand equivalent fractions.

This strategy can lead to deeper comprehension because learners can actually see how fractions relate to one another, rather than just manipulating numbers on paper. By visualizing fractions, students may also become more comfortable with the idea of representing numbers that are not whole, which is pivotal for their mathematical development.