This lesson will allow students to learn, through the hands-on use of virtual fraction bars, the following concepts: a good understanding of fractions, equivalent fractions, ordering and comparing fractions, basic addition and subtraction of fractions, and fraction size notation.

Upon starting this program you will see the following image with several buttons on the left of the working panel and two arrows on the top of the working panel:

The program is pretty intuitive to use. The following table describes the functions of the different buttons and tools.

	As its name implies, by clicking on this button a bar will appear on the working panel. You can have a maximum of five bars.
	The four buttons below the break bar into heading are used to break the selected bar into different sections. When clicking on any of the four break buttons a small panel with options will appear. Click on the any of the options to break the bar into the desired number of sections. The next four entries in this table describe the options corresponding to each of the buttons.
	The options presented by clicking on this button are whole numbers: 1, 2, 3, 4,...12, and 16.
	The options presented by clicking on this button are fractions: 1, 1/2, 1/3, 1/4,...1/12, and 1/16.
	The options presented by clicking on this button are decimal numbers: 1.0, 0.5, 0.33, 0.25,... 0.0833, and 0.0625.
	The options presented by clicking on this button are percentages: 100%, 50%, 33 1/3%, 25%,... 8 1/3%, and 6.25%.
	These two arrow buttons on the top of the panel are used to increase or decrease the size of the selected fraction.
	The buttons below the show sizes as heading are used to select the format used to display the size of the selected bar. The three options are: Fractions. Example:  3/4 Decimals. Example:  0.75 Percents.  Example:  75%
	Clicking on this button with delete the selected bar.
	Clicking on this button with clear all the bars in the panel.
	You probably noticed that this slider is not in the picture of the panel above. The slider appears when you have two or more bars in the panel and it comes with a long vertical line. You can click on it and slide it right and left to be able to compare the different bar sizes.

When a bar is first added, it always appears as a whole or a one (1). You would then select the bar and break it into the number of desired sections and maybe also choose a specific format to display its size. Next, you would use the and buttons to change the size of the bar.

You can add up to five bars. Each of them can be broken into different number of sections, can have different sizes, and its size can be displayed in a different format.

Several of the functions operate on the selected bar. A bar is selected by simply clicking on it and a blue arrow will appear to show which of the bars is the selected one. You can click on the panel to unselect the bar.