Division Game to Teach Remainders

So when we hit division my very maths orientated son struggled. This was a hard thing for him to acknowledge as he has always excelled at maths and found it really easy. I get this, division is the first time that you come across calculations that are not exact, and suddenly you have a remainder. Also suddenly you are presented with a load of new terms: divisor, dividend, divisible add to the this the constant interchange of terms such as share, between, divide etc..

Initially I just thought it’s a drill and practice thing, and if I teach him one method of doing division he just needs to keep performing the calculations and it will sink in.  When this didn’t work we moved to another method and again practiced using division sums. This is all laid out sort of in Math Mammoth, so it was easy to progress along this route trying one method then another whilst practising all the time. We talked a lot about how you can skip count to find the answer, use arrays or continuously minus, all valid strategies. However whilst he could do exact division easily when skip counting as he knows his times tables well, thank you Waldorf! He really struggled with the concept of a remainder. In fact the whole introduction of the remainder seemed to throw off his previous understanding of exact division! Aargh! Their minds truly are a mystery.

I was becoming aware as well of growing impatience and underlying anxiety in my child relating to this. I needed to find a strategy that worked for him, so I spent a couple of hours scouring Pinterest and I found the bus method. I knew immediately when I saw it that this would make sense to him, as it used a similar concept to carrying in addition.  It would also allow him to do the calculations easier and faster.  I got him to write this in his maths notebook as a reminder. We then did a page or two of calculations. 

So now that we have nailed exact division again, it was time to tackle non exact, the dreaded remainder. I wanted to reintroduce this concept in a fun way so I made a game around his favourite topic at the moment Pokemon. This is a game that I and he play during maths time and he loves it, it really reinforced the concept of having remainders.

Once the concept of having something left a remainder was established through using the game, I then reintroduced the bus method of division and we practiced with dividends that would produce a remainder. This has been a very effective method and I am so grateful that I can spend this time helping my child understand and now, well Halleluiah we have mastery!

You can download the game here