The T ale of One F ourth

1. ¼ The Tale of One Fourth

2. ¼ There once was a pizza chef who wanted to make the most delicious pizza that anyone had ever tasted. So, he began by making the dough, then mixing ingredients for the sauce. Finally he sprinkled fresh cheese all over the top of his pizza.

3. ¼ The only problem was that the pizza chef didn’t know what toppings to put on his perfect pizza! Should he put pepperonis on it? Or should he leave it with just cheese?

4. ¼ The chef and his wife loved cheese pizza, but their neighbors who were coming over loved pepperoni pizza. He had a brilliant idea! He would make half of the pizza plain cheese, and he would put pepperonis on the other half! This way, he and his wife could eat cheese pizza and their neighbors could eat pepperoni.

5. ¼ So he split the pizza in half once, then he cut each half in half. This made four equal pieces! Each of the four people at dinner ate one equal piece of the pizza. Each person at one fourth of the pizza.

6. ¼ Splitting the pizza into four equal parts helped the pizza chef make the most delicious pizza ever for himself, his wife, and their two neighbors. All four people got one equal share of the pizza.

7. ¼ ____________________ 4 We write this as a fraction. The number on the bottom is the denominator. The denominator tells us how many equal shares there are. Since the chef’s pizza was split into four equal pieces, the denominator is 4.

8. ¼ 1 ____________________ The number on the top is the numerator. The denominator tells us how many shares. Each person got to eat one piece of pizza, so each person had one share. That means that the numerator is 1.

9. ¼ 1 ____________________ 4 When you put the numerator and the denominator together, it makes a FRACTION. The fraction of the pizza that each person got to eat was ¼. There were four equal shares, and each person had one share.