Division #2

A simple task that was given to students so that they could be more mindful of the relationship of division with multiplication. Students had to find as many examples as possible (e.g. 24 divided by 3 = 8  which is the same as 3 x 8 = 24) Main Idea: Division is reverse multiplication.

Next, students got the following question to determine whether they can divide a two-digit number by a one digit number.

Most students used a traditional algorithm to divide. A few student used a decomposing strategy - 72 was split into two numbers - 60 and 12. Each was then divided by 2.

60 divided by 2 = 30
12 divided by 2 = 6
Both numbers were then added together to get the final answer of 36 pairs.

We then engaged in a conversation about the different strategies used as well as the steps to consider when doing  traditional long division. The mnemonic D, M, S, C, B was taught.

Students were given a worksheet to practise division on their own:

Students that were finished early were given the following task:

Here are some of the solutions they came up with:

They agreed that there would be 8 possible solutions if the instruction was followed (3-digit number divided by a 1-digit number) However, they also suggested 940 divided by 10 and 94 divided by 1 could give the same result even though they did not meet the criteria for the task.

Students also noticed a pattern in the divisor and dividend. The divisor (number divided into another number) was going up by 1 each time - 2, 3, 4, 5 etc The dividend (number to be divided) was increasing by 94 each time - 188, 282, 376 etc Good thinking kiddies!