Dividing by a Fraction
Drag the dividend bar and the divisor's own stick, both measured in eighths. The stick is laid down repeatedly along the bar below — the count is measured, not found by flipping the second fraction over.
6/8 ÷ 2/8 = 3
The 2-eighths stick fits exactly 3 times along the 6-eighths bar, with nothing left over.
- Dividend
- 6/8
- Divisor
- 2/8
- Full copies
- 3
- Reciprocal-multiply check
- 6/8 × 8/2 = 3
Try a pair
Ready to try some? Dividing fractions worksheets
Where it usually goes wrong
"Keep, change, flip" answers a division question without ever showing what division MEANS for two fractions — so a student can correctly turn 6/8 ÷ 2/8 into 6/8 × 8/2 and still have no idea why that flip is allowed, only that it is the step that gets marked right.
Try this
- Press "6/8 ÷ 2/8". Count the copies of the short orange stick along the tiled row yourself — three of them, fitting exactly, before checking that the readout agrees.
- Press "6/8 ÷ 4/8". Now the stick fits once whole, and the leftover sliver is exactly half of one more stick — that half is where 1.5 actually comes from, not a rounding of it.
- Press "3/8 ÷ 6/8". The dividend is now SHORTER than the divisor stick, so not even one whole copy fits — the answer is correctly less than 1, which "how many times does it go in" makes obvious and a flipped multiplication does not.
Where this goes next
The reciprocal-multiply fact on the page is the same measurement written algebraically: (a/8) ÷ (b/8) is exactly a/b, because the eighths on top and bottom cancel — dividing by a fraction only looks like a different operation because the two numbers being compared do not always already share a denominator.