This exercise is meant to practice fractions inside the classroom. Brainstorm a list of student attributes that is commonly seen in the classroom such as glasses, blue shorts, black hair, or green eyes. Have the students stand up on one side of the room. Call out the attribute and any student with that particular attribute must go to the other side of the room. Choose a student to tell you the fraction of students with that attribute and write it on the board. The student can even come up to the board and try to reduce it if that is age-appropriate.
Using M&Ms, or different color beads if food is not allowed, separate groups of them into small bags. You will want to count them out and either have a certain amount of each color in all of the bags with one answer key or have different amounts in each bag with different answer keys. Create a half sheet of paper with questions like, "What fraction of red beads is in the bag?" You can have the students practice adding or subtracting fractions with questions like, "How many more blue beads are there than red? Write the equation using fractions and show your work." Break the students up in groups and have them work on the questions together with one bag per group.
Depending on the number of students in your class, write various fractions on index cards, one index card per student. The fractions should vary in amount. Next, have the students tape their index card to their chests and line up in order from smallest to largest. Let them deliberate, and work it out on paper and in their heads. Be sure to monitor so that one student is not doing all the work, even though some students will naturally rise up as leaders during this exercise.
This activity allows the students to collect data and evaluate it using fractions. Create a score card that has a column for each group or team that will participate. Break that column up into two more columns, one for shots taken and one for shots made. Gather tennis balls, ping pong balls or wads of paper (careful to smooth them out and recycle them afterward) and wastebaskets or other containers for the teams to shoot into. Put tape on the floor to designate the shooting lines and have the team members shoot a set amount of shots into waste baskets as it is being recorded on the score card. The students should then have the opportunity to analyze the fraction of shots made for each team. This can easily transition into a lesson on percents as well.