Hello All!
We have just started our division unit - it has been fun to start connecting what we have been doing throughout the year with addition, subtraction and multiplicaiton, to division.

I thought I would pass along the most recent visual anchors we are using with the kids around division. We are learning about two different types of division problems: sharing and grouping. Check it out!

Partition problems: Students should know that the division operation is appropriate for problems when you know the quantity, and the number of portions to be formed form it, and you want to find how many or how much will be in each portion.

Example: “I shared 18 cm of licorice equally between three people. How much did I give each person?”

Quotition Problems (you know the quota): we can use division for problems where you know the quantity and how many or how much is to be in each portion, and you want to find out how many portions there will be. These are also called “grouping” or “repeated subtraction” questions.

Example: “I had 18 cm of licorice and gave each person 3cm. How many people could get licorice?”

In both cases 18 ÷ 3 works – we want to continually ask students why division works for both.

Note: If students only associate division with sharing, they may resist the notion of dividing by fractional amounts. If they only think of 15 ÷ 5 only as “how many fives in 15” they may resist dividing a smaller number by larger number later on.  A rule students often use to cope with math is that “you always divide the bigger number by the smaller number.” This just isn’t the case and we need to be careful when we use language around our division activities.

Keep those questions coming!

Ms. Fraser