When we bring in the problems with remainder in division, children sometimes get confused over the steps involved. Many children do not understand where to stop. The child who has such a type of confusion stops the process of division abruptly, although further division is possible. For example, if the child is dividing 24 by 5, he will stop the division process after subtracting 15 from 24. In this case, the teacher has to ask some leading questions to the child. This will make the child see that the remainder 9 can further be divided or we can take away one more group of 5 from it. Child then subtracts 5 once more from 9, and finds out that now 4 remain. Here, the teacher again questions to the child if it can take away another group of 5. At this point child finds that there is no possibility of taking away another group of 5. Therefore, this is the point at which the child has to stop and declare his answer to the division problem. Thus, the quotient is 4 and the remainder is also 4! Such division-problems having quotient and remainder equal, should be presented to the child intentionally. Otherwise, the child might develop a wrong notion that the quotient and remainder can never be equal. At this stage the child should be shown the way of writing his answer for the division 24 ÷ 5. It is written as
24 ÷ 5 = 4R4. Here, the remainder "4" is indicated by writing "R" before it.This is shown here:
For the division problems where the remainder is zero, it is a convention to write only the quotient for the answer.
Teacher will have to be very patient at this stage of teaching. The practice should be arranged in such a way that without any trouble child learns division.
To begin with children should be given the practice on the family of division by two, with remainders. These are: 11 ÷ 2, 13 ÷ 2, 15 ÷ 2, 17 ÷ 2, 19 ÷ 2. Next they should be given practice on the family of division by 3 with remainders. Which would be: 11 ÷ 3, 13 ÷ 3, 14 ÷ 3, 16 ÷ 3, 17 ÷ 3, 19 ÷ 3, 20 ÷ 3, 22 ÷ 3, 23 ÷ 3, 25 ÷ 3, 26 ÷ 3, 28 ÷ 3, 29 ÷ 3.
Preliminary practice on material of this kind is useful in building up relationships, and it forms an easy step before the child carries out distributed practice on all the division facts with remainders. The child may be allowed the use of concrete material like the number cards with dots and thread or sketch pen for grouping.
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