Going Off Script

The math program goes from dividing by tens to dividing with a two digit divisor without any reteaching of division with a one digit divisor. Therefore I took a leap and went off script! I broke the lessons down to really make sure students had a solid understand of division.

The first day I put a problem on the board to get their minds going. Some students picked up their pencils, expecting to solve the problem. I surprised them and asked them to think about how to explain what this problem means using math vocabulary. Using BrainPOP’s Make a Map tool we developed a word web for division. The word quotient was in the middle. Students came up with dividend, divisor, remainder, equal group, and product. This led to a conversation on inverse operations. Then I asked students to write me a short piece, explaining what division is. Having students explain math concepts using vocabulary is a great way to express understanding and take a deeper dive.

Students shared their written pieces with classmates. Then we started learning how to divide in groups of tens, hundreds, and thousands. Many students used multiplication to help them. Laying the foundation helped us the second day when I posted a problem with a single digit divisor. Again, some students picked up pencils to solve the problem. Alas they sadly had to put them down because we showed this problem using a model (base 10 blocks). Students saw why we start dividing in different places when we had trade cubes to make more cubes. They began to understand why we have a remainder, and that if your remainder is larger than  your divisor it is incorrect.

Breaking up into small groups, students worked with teachers on understanding the process of division and thinking in terms of equal groups. We practiced several problems as a whole class, then small group, and finally independently. Students who needed a challenge got some bigger numbers to divide using a single digit divisor. Tomorrow we will use a deck of cards to create problems to solve. Then we will return to our math lessons from the program. Sometimes it is okay to go off script. Know your students. Understand their needs. That is what is most important. If I had jumped into two digit divisors I know the results would have been vastly different.

A parent sent me this image of her child's work that the student did when she got home from school. 

I have shared the image with her permission.