Fractions meet decimals for the first time this year — and 1/4 = 0.25 is a bigger leap than it looks on paper.
25 August 2026 · 5 min read
Year 3 established fractions as real numbers you can add, subtract and compare. Year 4 builds on that by introducing decimals, and — critically — connecting the two, so a child now has to hold the idea that 1/4 and 0.25 are exactly the same value, just written two different ways.
To an adult, a fraction and its decimal equivalent are so familiar they barely register as "two representations of the same thing." To a nine-year-old encountering it properly for the first time, 1/4 and 0.25 look like two entirely unrelated pieces of notation — one has a line and two numbers stacked, the other has a dot and a string of digits. Genuinely connecting the two — understanding that a quarter of something and 25 hundredths of it are identical amounts — needs deliberate, visual teaching, not just a fact to be told and memorised.
Because British currency is already decimal, money offers one of the clearest real-world links between fractions and decimals: a quarter of a pound is 25p, which is £0.25. A child who's comfortable with money often grasps the fraction-decimal connection faster through pounds and pence than through an abstract number line, simply because they already have a strong mental model of what 25p "looks like" as a portion of a pound.
Comparing decimals with a different number of digits after the point trips up plenty of otherwise confident children — thinking that 0.4 is smaller than 0.25 because "4 is a smaller number than 25," rather than recognising that 0.4 means four tenths (equivalent to 0.40), which is larger than 0.25. This is one of the most common and well-documented decimal misconceptions at this stage, and it's worth checking for specifically rather than assuming it's just a careless error.
A hundred square (a 10×10 grid) makes hundredths visible in a way that's hard to get from numbers alone — shading in 25 of the 100 squares to show 0.25, then relating that back to a quarter of the whole grid. Combined with money examples, this tends to build the fraction-decimal connection more solidly than either on its own.
Grasp Maths checks whether a child treats "more digits" as automatically meaning "bigger number" when comparing decimals — one of the clearest, most diagnostic misconceptions at this stage — and responds with practice aimed specifically at that gap.
Looking for printable practice too? See our Year 4 maths worksheets, or read the full Year 4 maths overview.
Try a free Grasp Maths practice session, matched to the Year 4 curriculum.