- A basic skill is being able to compare decimals to fractions. For example, is 1/3 less than or greater than 0.33? A simple game to practice this facility is to break up the number line between 0 and 1 by 10ths and then ask students to place fractions between the appropriate decimals. The number line can be issued on a piece of paper for at-desk work, or two can be drawn on the board for student-to-student competition.
The game can be varied, based on skill level. For example, reduction of fractions can be introduced by asking where to place 6/8, or advanced students can be asked where to place 5/8. - As an at-desk game, students can connect dots labeled with a mix of decimals, fractions and percentages, in correct order. This also affords an opportunity to teach the "vinculum," that bar appearing over the repeating decimal portion of a number. For example, instead of following 0.3 with 1/3, 1/3 can be written as 0.3 with a line over it. The nature of connect-the-dots requires that values be unique, highlighting to students who haven't learned the vinculum to at least notice that it changes the decimal's value.
- Students generally have little trouble learning that 1/10 is one-tenth, or that 1/10,000 is one ten-thousandth. Learning that 0.0001 is the same value is a little harder. Therefore, fractions with denominators in powers of 10 can serve as a stepping stone.
As an at-desk game, the left side of the paper can have fractions divided by a power of 10, and the right side can have the (mismatched) decimal values. Students then have to connect values on the left with the correct values on the right. To avoid making it too easy, the numerators of the fractions should be heavily repeated. To make more of a game of it, the two columns can be prewritten on an easel pad for an in-class, at-the-board competition. - The trick with online games is that they tend to be as private an experience as playing video games, requiring verification that the student played the game. If each student has computer access in class, for example in a computer lab, it is possible to run time-based competitions. For at-home game playing, verification that games have been played as "homework" can be made by having the student use the print-screen function on her home computer to print out the screen showing her score, time or level of completion.
A few online decimal games that give a score that is printable using the screen-print function are linked in the Resources section. - Fractions can be substituted in any of these games using percentages.
One suggestion for making percentage conversion more difficult is to include percentages less than 1 percent. Students may be confused, for example, as to how to write 0.7 percent in decimal form without the percent sign, since both the decimal and the percent sign indicate division by powers of 10.
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