Division Strategies

My post "Sharing in Division" is about an activity that I use often at the beginning of my unit on division to teach the strategy of "sharing". 

The next two strategies I teach in division are "repeated subtraction" and "repeated addition". My maths class loves hands-on activities so I am constantly thinking of different ways to teach lessons which will keep my students engaged. This strategy could have been taught simply by using a worksheet, but instead, I had students solve their division equations on a sentence strip using a number line.

This lesson was taught over two days, one for repeated addition and one for repeated subtraction. The simple fact of having students complete their number lines on a sentence strip, rather than on a piece of paper in their notebook caused students to stay engaged and focused (and also very excited) throughout this maths lesson. Another thing that is wonderful about my maths students is their excitement when they see their work displayed, hence students put in extra effort when they are completing a task that will be displayed.

For repeated subtraction, students were given a division equation and had to solve it using a number line. They began by drawing the line and started by placing the dividend on the right side. They then jumped backward by the amount of the divisor until they got to zero (hence, repeated subtraction). The number of jumps they made was the answer (quotient) to their division equation.

For repeated addition, students completed a number line again, however, this time they started on the left side of the number line at zero. They then proceeded to make jumps in the amount of the divisor until they reached the dividend amount. Again, the number of jumps they made was the answer (quotient) to their division equation.

 After teaching repeated addition, students made the realisation that "division is like multiplication" which was amazing as it segwayed perfectly into teaching the inverse operations strategy.