Imagine you have a pizza and you want to share it equally with a friend. You cut it right down the middle. You each get one piece. That one piece you have is a part of the whole pizza. That's a fraction! Fractions are a way to talk about parts of a whole thing, whether it's a pizza, a candy bar, or even a group of people.

We write fractions using two numbers, one on top of the other, separated by a line. For example, if your pizza was cut into two equal slices and you have one, your share is written as $\frac{1}{2}$.

Every fraction has two special parts: the numerator and the denominator. They each tell us something important.

Let's look at the fraction $\frac{3}{5}$. The denominator is 5, so we know the whole is cut into five equal pieces. The numerator is 3, which tells us we have three of those pieces.

Sometimes the easiest way to understand a fraction is to see it. We can draw fractions in a few different ways.

One way is with an area model. This is when we take a shape, like a rectangle or a circle, and divide it into equal parts. The shaded parts show the fraction.

Another way is with a set model. Instead of one whole thing, we look at a group of items. The fraction can tell us about a part of that group. For example, if you have a bag with 5 marbles and 3 of them are blue, then $\frac{3}{5}$ of the marbles are blue.

Finally, we can find fractions on a number line. Think about the space between 0 and 1. We can split that space into equal parts. Each mark represents a fraction.

Understanding these models will help you picture what fractions mean and get you ready for working with them in new ways.