 Hello, my amazing math minds, and welcome to this week's Math Tip Monday. I am Heidi Rothmeyer at ESU 8, and we're going to continue our conversation about some of the vocabulary we might be using in our classroom and how that may be confusing for our students. And the topic today I think is very relevant, especially for third, clear up through 12th grade, because I know a lot of high school teachers that still use this term that we're going to talk about. So given this example, how would you describe this process of turning 824th into 1 third? A term that may come to mind is reducing fractions, simplifying fractions, you know, what language are you using and which would be the most appropriate. So perhaps you use the term reduce fractions. So I have shown below a couple examples of four twelfths and a circle graph and a fraction bar. And we can see that I can take the four twelfths and also write it as two six or one third. Now here's the problem when we use the term reduce. It implies that we are making the amount smaller, which we are clearly not doing. So we don't want to use the term reduce fractions. Instead, what we want to say is that we aren't simplifying the fraction or simplification. So we are obviously taking a circle with a lot of segments, 12 in this case, and simplifying it down to three, but not reducing the amount that is shaded. So a better term would be to say to simplify the fraction. So that is a quick fix that we can all make. And if we are consistent through grade levels and teachers that will really improve the number sense of our students and make sure that we are sharing accurate and precise vocabulary about what exactly the students are doing with those numbers. And this is certainly very important when they are especially introduced to equivalent fractions in fourth grade, but certainly it will be helpful if everyone on up through 12th grade is using the term simplify instead of reducing. So good luck with that change. And until next time, stay well, be kind.