Understanding written division

Last week we moved from mental strategies and understanding the concept of division to using written methods. I remember last year, going through the motions of teaching chunking - first on a number line and then vertically.

This year I decided to try out something different and to build up to chunking bit by bit. I found a great website https://desertdesigned.me/2015/10/23/teaching-division-with-area-models/ that showed how to use the area model when dividing. This seemed to be a more visual way to begin. Rather than recording horizontally on the side though, we did all of our recording within the rectangles.

I think this was a really clear picture for the children as it carried on from last week's idea that division is about trying to get as close to 0 as possible.  They all seemed to be on board with this which was great.









The following day we looked at using the same method but recording our subtracting on the right hand side, using a vertical method.

The final stage was to not use the rectangles at all, but to
record using the chunking method recording vertically. Some children were happy to move onto using this, but some wanted to stay with the area model. At this stage I am not worried about which method they use, but the fact that they have understood what they are doing - taking away 'chunks' each time to get as near as possible to 0, and using known table facts to help them do this.

They also came across some sums where there was a remainder and it was not possible to get to 0. This led to a great discussion of what we would do with that leftover number.