One thing that had never been explained to the students in my class is that fractions represents part of a whole. So, we spent some time talking about the different parts of things and how they can be represented with fractions. First, we used our class. 15/27 are girls and 12/27 are boys. Then we talked about dollars and how a quarter is literally 1/4 of a dollar. And one dollar is 1/10 of a ten dollar bill. Then, we broke them into groups and asked each group to come up with several more examples and then to draw pictures of it, labeling each whole and fraction. This basically took the form of a pie chart, but with percentages as the labels.
Basically, I highly recommend you show your students the idea of a whole and how that applies to fractions. Especially explain how 3/3 is 1 whole and 4/3 is a whole and then 1/3 more. Our kids really seemed to have a break through when they started picturing and drawing fractions.
I've included this picture that might be a good starting point.
Also, if you just have a couple that need help: send them to the computer! Here are some links for good practice with fractions (multiplying, dividing, simplifying, adding and subtracting).
Great practice
Great explanations
And for kids that are just advanced and might want to do more, there is a website called free rice, where every right answer a student puts in earns 10 grains of rice to impoverished children around the world. It's a great way to get them to think globally while also working math problems (and the more they answer correctly, the harder the problems get!).
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