3rd Grade Partition Shapes Into Equal Parts worksheets

About this worksheet

Before third graders can compare or add fractions, they need firsthand experience cutting a whole into equal parts and naming one part with a fraction word. This worksheet starts from one picture at a time: a circle, a rectangle, or a bar cut into two, three, four, six, or eight equal parts, sometimes with one part shaded. A frequent mistake at this age is cutting a shape into pieces that look close enough, then calling four unequal pieces fourths anyway, or naming a part by counting the cuts instead of the parts. Questions ask your child to name what one equal part is called, to count how many equal parts make the whole, to name the fraction of a shape that is shaded, and to work through a short word problem about sharing a pizza, a garden, or a chocolate bar cut into equal pieces.

Support versions use only halves, thirds, and fourths. Standard and challenge versions add sixths and eighths, where the parts are smaller and easier to miscount. Encourage your child to trace each part with a finger while counting, since equal parts that are not counted carefully are the most common source of a wrong answer here.

What your child will learn

• Split a shape into equal parts
• Name one equal part with a fraction word
• Write the unit fraction for one shaded part
• Solve word problems about sharing equal parts