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Division with
Third graders struggles to solve contextualized, student-generated division problems with remainders offer insights to guide instruction.
By Ter uni Lamberg and Lynda R. Wiest
Conceptualizing
Remainders
hat do you do with the remainder when you divide? Mrs. Thompson asked her third-grade students. They replied with such comments as, You cant share that, because they wont be equal! and Its not going to come out even because you cant do that! These answers were consistent with third- and fourth-grade student performance in a pretest and a posttest administered as part of a math professional development project conducted by author Teruni Lamberg. In this test, most students successfully solved the division problem involving whole numbers but were unable to solve 27 4, which made the authors wonder why children have difficulty with remainders.
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Daniel laflor/iStockphoto.com
What is involved in helping children understand simple division and division with remainders? Reys and colleagues found that children should encounter division problems involving remainders from the time they begin to work with division ideas. As long as problems remain on a concrete level, the concept of remainder is rather easy (2007, p. 277). This article explores a lesson Thompson conducted with her third graders that involved using concrete materials to reason informally about division with remainders. The lesson was part of a unit on division that Thompson had developed.
context. NCTM (2000) promotes such contextualized learning. Considering remainders in context and handling them accordingly is especially important (Reys et al. 2007; Van de Walle, Karp, and Bay-Williams 2010). Thompson assembled four different bags of objects, one for each student group: Bag 1: 100-centimeter tape measure Bag 2: 55 pencils Bag 3: $56.88 in play money Bag 4: 75 square tiles
Figu R e 1
third-grade students symbolically represented their problem situation correctly using a number sentence. they made tally marks in two groups to check their answer.
The objects in the bag could represent anything, but problem contexts were constrained by the given materials. Having to create and solve a division problem required students to think about the meaning of division. Students had to begin by deciding which dividend they wanted to use. Open-ended problems such as this require reasoning. Although division may be conceptualized in more than one way structurally, children tend toward the fairsharing (partition) model, perhaps because they find the concept of separating a given number of items into fair shares more comprehensible or because they are given more experience with this context. (The other major type, measurement or quotitive division, involves distributing a given amount of something to an unknown number of groups, which is what must be determined. For example, if there are twenty-four dice and each child needs four to play a certain game, how many children can play?)
students discovered that the concrete objects could not be divided equally, most of them piled the objects in the middle of the table and started redistributing them. Nearly all the children had to manipulate the concrete objects to solve the problem. They seemed to understand that one key conception of a division situation involves separating objects into equal groups. This physical action was critical for students to actively consider the meaning of division and create a visible record of their efforts.
rectly using a number sentence (see fig. 1). The tally marks and the equation 100 2 = 50 cm represent how they originally thought about the problem context. They made tally marks in 2 groups to check their answer. They recorded the intervals of 10 they had identified with their markers by using tally marks to organize the groups of 10 for easy counting. They also recorded 100 10 = 10 and wrote that each group will get 5 (10-cm) pieces. Furthermore, they represented the answer by showing how tally marks in groups of 5 can be divided into 2 groups of 50.
a group created a division problem using 100-cm tape. they placed markers at intervals of 10 to keep track of their counting.
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Figu R e 2
Group 2 found remainders so awkward to deal with that they hid their extra pencils to create a cleaner version of the original problem.
Students kept getting frustrated because they could not make this happen. When they compared the quantities of the pencil groups and found them to be uneven, they kept returning pencils to the middle of the table and recounting them without determining the total number of pencils they had. Finally students realized that 3 group members had 14 pencils and 1 member had 13. The 3 students returned 1 pencil each, but they eventually took them back and told the fourth student that he should be content with 13. In the long run, the group was so uncomfortable with the uneven groups that they eliminated the remainders by hiding the leftover pencils. The problem they created was thus a sanitized version of the original (see fig. 2). The students recordings show a transition from a repeated-addition approach (4 groups of 10 + 3) to a multiplicative strategy that involved calculating 4 10 = 40 and 4 3 =12 and then adding the results.
Figu R e 3
after students in group 3 created a division problem with square tiles to represent books, they realized that apples would work better than books for fractional parts.
early exposure to the concept of division with remainders helps students circumvent confusion.
told them that they could exchange the bills for comparable values using different play money denominations. At this point, students were able to successfully distribute the money among 4 students, and each counted his or her portion. Despite some initial false starts, the group was ultimately able to symbolically record its problem correctly (see fig. 4).
Follow-up instruction
Her students informal explorations and problem development during these tasks gave Thompson much insight into their thinking and how to proceed with subsequent instruction. Students clearly needed much more experience with division problems with remainders so they could become more comfortable and skilled with solving them. Such skill includes the ability to consider real-world contexts in determining answers to problems. Accordingly, Thompson devoted follow-up instruction to solving problems she posed and having students do similar tasks to those described in this article until students achieved a reasonable level of confidence and mastery. She posed problems that required the exact remainder to be retained (as in How many ounces of soda do each of 4 children lar problem context (fair-shared books) once prompted by the teacher to do so. Students in this group were somewhat uncomfortable with a fair-sharing problem involving a remainder that could not be partitioned, so they changed the problem to one that could be divided evenly. This problem provides a good opportunity to discuss as a class what to do with a remainder: When does it make sense to split a remainder into fractional parts, and when does it not?
Daniel laflor/iStockphoto.com
Figu R e 4
the children in group 4 did not automatically assume that everyone would get the same amount if they distributed money evenly.
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having meaningful work generating contextual word problems leads students to better understanding of division with remainders and less reliance on algorithms.
get from 34 ounces?), problems in which the remainder should be discarded (as in How many 7-inch bracelets can be made from a 38-inch chain?), and problems in which the remainder requires the answer to be rounded up to the next whole number (as in How many buses that hold 60 students each are needed to transport 215 third graders on a field trip?). The materials to be divided included different types of units based on discrete or continuous models (e.g., cookies versus pie). Over time, student-constructed problems started to show similar variety.
Classroom implications
Teaching division effectively involves building a bridge between childrens intuitive models of division and the formal operations that represent childrens conceptual understanding. Analyzing students reasoning is important teacher feedback for helping children make meaning of situations and progress in their mathematical thinking. This is why the lesson was designed to have students first think explicitly about division situations using intuitive models. Intuitive thinking is central to number sense in the early years, which is foundational to fluent whole-number compu432
March 2012 teaching children mathematics
tation (Fennell 2008). The goal was to have this informal understanding lay the foundation for formal mathematics. Anghileri, Beishuizen, and Van Putten (2002) found that contextualized problems are more conducive to informal strategies founded on number sense, whereas bare number problems are more likely to be attempted using an algorithm. The researchers found that although informal methods may be inefficient, supporting those methods initially and helping scaffold students to more efficient mathematical procedures led to greater cognitive gains and fewer misconceptions than using formal methods alone. In the lesson described here, having students generate problems by manipulating objects provided a more concrete entry for students to build on their intuitive knowledge, engage in discussion, and think in more complex ways. The open-ended task of generating division word problems forced the children to think about the meaning of division. Students developed and solved a problem and put their problems and solutions into writing. They needed to understand the meaning of the dividend and divisor. Further, they explored the physical act of partitioning objects to make equal-size
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groups. During this process, some were faced with remainders. Some groups struggled with this situation and changed the problem details to create a problem that resulted in no leftovers. This shows students need for much meaningful work with division problems with remainders to develop facility and comfort with making reasonable real-world decisions about how to handle them in varied contexts.
RE F E R ENCES
reys, robert, mary m. lindquist, Diana V. lambdin, and nancy l. Smith. 2007. Helping Children Learn Mathematics. 8th ed. hoboken, nJ: Wiley and Sons. Van de Walle, John a., karen S. karp, and Jennifer m. Bay-Williams. 2010. Elementary and Middle School Mathematics: Teaching Developmentally. 7th ed. Boston: allyn and Bacon.
Teruni Lamberg, terunil@unr.edu, is an associate professor of elementary mathematics education at the University of nevada in reno. her research interests include childrens mathematical thinking, teacher education, and technology in mathematics education. Lynda R. Wiest, wiest@unr.edu, is a professor of mathematics education at the University of nevada in reno. her scholarly interests include mathematics education, educational equity, and teacher education.
anghileri, Julia, meindert Beishuizen, and kees Van putten. 2002. from informal Strategies to Structured procedures: mind the Gap. Educational Studies in Mathematics 49 (february): 14970. fennell, francis. 2008. number Senseright now! NCTM News Bulletin 44 (march): 3. national council of teachers of mathematics (nctm). 2000. Principles and Standards for School Mathematics. reston, Va: nctm.
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