division
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Introduction to Division
My focus is on working with students with special needs. Many struggle with rote memorization, including for multiplication facts. I find that skip counting, with scaffolded support in the learning process, provides them access to multiplication and therefore division. To access division, I use an approach of skip counting to find a missing factor and…
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Partial Quotients Too?!
There is a difference of opinion on what is essential to teach in math. Partial Quotients algorithm (and the Standard Algorithm for division) are topics I believe are worth discussing regarding the need to master these beyond a single digit divisor. In response to the post on the value of teaching Long Division by muli-digit…
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Long Division: Should it be Long Gone?
I have seen many students struggle with long division (especially the Standard Algorithm but also the Partial Quotients Algorithm). Similarly, I have seen many teachers lament this lack of proficiency. I suggest that it is prudent to conduct a cost-benefit analysis for learning these algorithms for division beyond 1-digit divisors. If students understand the concept…
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Long Division – Scaffolded Handout
Many teachers shared that long division is one of the hardest math topics to teach. A major factor is likely related to a lack of mastery of multiplication facts. I have posted about some strategies related to multiplication. Here is a handout my initial attempt at scaffolding long division (WORD, PDF). There are 4 versions:…
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Hack for Multiplication (and division) Facts
A common method to learn multiplication facts is through skip counting. In turn, this is a means of learning division facts (see next paragraph). The challenge for many students is they struggle to learn the skip count routines or cannot engage brute force memorization effectively (e.g., have a working memory deficit). The challenge with multiplication…
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Life Skills Math – Not So Easy
As I wrote previously, shopping is dense with math tasks as are grocery stores. Here are some division situations that are sneaky challenging and require a student to know when and why to divide before even reaching for the calculator. I will use these to help illustrate the fact that life skills math is not…
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Basic Skills Older Students
A widespread problem at the secondary level is addressing basic skills deficiencies – gaps from elementary school. For example, I often encounter students in algebra 1 or even higher level math who cannot compute problems like 5÷2. Often the challenges arise from learned helplessness developed over time. How do we address this in the time…
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Long Division for Students who Struggle
Making the concept of long division accessible: Start with simpler problem Use base ten blocks (and later with drawings as seen in the photo) and have students model each step of the long division with the base ten blocks. Do this for each step. Follow with more complicated problems See link to document with full explanation.