Stop overthinking the calculator

A basic scientific calculator like the TI-30X IIS is all you need for middle school fractions and square roots. You don’t need a graphing calculator. You don’t need the $100 one. You probably don’t even need the $25 one if you can find the $15 Casio equivalent.

Any scientific calculator made in the last decade handles square roots and fractions. The difference is how they display fractions. The TI-30X IIS shows fractions the way you’d write them on paper: stacked, with a division bar. That alone makes it