Here is a real one. A GAA squad has 28 players, and a quarter of them are goalkeepers-in-training. How many is that? Before you work anything out, give me a rough guess first: is it closer to 5, or closer to 15?

We will work through four fraction bars, one at a time. Watch how each bar gets split up, and how many parts we keep. Look for the two moves that stay the same every single time.

Today we work through these together on the board, one at a time: 3/8 of 64, then 2/3 of 24, then 5/6 of 30, then 7/10 of 40. For each one we build it fresh on the same bar — we re-enter the total, split the bar into the bottom number of equal parts, read the value of one part, then shade the top number of parts. The bar starts on our first problem, 64 split into eighths, with nothing shaded yet.

Now we'll solve these fraction problems together, one at a time: a quarter of the 28-player GAA squad, then a fifth of a 30-pupil class who went on the trip, then a tenth of a €40 bookshop voucher, then a third of a €60 club prize, and finally a sixth of the 42 match tickets. Spot the action words, choose the operation, and work each one out in two steps.