Whole Number & Decimal - Division

Much of this lesson references the idea of thinking about division in terms of multiplication. As such, the lesson starts with an exercise designed to provide students with a complete set of multiplication grids. You will need to print slide 1 for students and hand them to them on the way in to lessons. The answers are on slide 2.

Then follows a true or false exercise designed to refresher students understanding of division. Do this using thumbs up or thumbs down across the room (They can always do in the middle if they aren’t sure). The next activity gets students to think of division in terms of worded sentences e.g. How many 5’s are there in 15? followed by a look at fact families. This is to get students to remember and understand the inverse relationship between multiplication and division.

Similar to the other arithmetic lessons, there are then mental and written methods of division. The mental methods of division are a series of divisibility tests and what to look for to see if a number will divide to give an integer answer. Provide students with a copy of the green grid on slide 7 and fill in the rules as they go along. It’s fun to do the number sort activities at the board with some board pens. When they have all the rules, they should attempt to complete the orange grid on slide 13. Bonus points for any students who can recognize that all the divisions can be completed but some will give a decimal answer.

To lead in to the written division techniques, first is a reminder of some of the literacy such as dividend, quotient and divisor and a visual demonstration of how division works as a method of grouping. There is then an “I do, you do” section to teach bus stop method. Most students should have seen this before. There is then a differentiated challenge. Students should challenge themselves to get as far as they can.

The next section is about dividing decimals including giving decimal answers, dividing a decimal by an integer and giving recurring decimal answers and some practice on these skills. A trickier extension is to ask students to explain how to divide by a decimal. This slide includes a visual explanation of why it works and some practice.

Lastly, there is some problem solving questions and a division dot to dot. Students will need a copy of slide 28 and 29. Students should start at an underlined question. They then need to join the question number to it’s answer. The answer then becomes the next question number until they reach a dead end. They should then start at the next underlined number.

Activities included:

• Timetable grid starter
• Division True or False
• Division as a sentence
• Mental Divisibility tests
• Division Literacy
• Written division explanation & practice
• Mixed decimal division
• Dividing by a decimal
• Problem Solving
• Division Dot to Dot