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How much division does your rising 4th grader know?


Mommy22alyns
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My DD just finished 3rd grade. However, she really struggles with math.

 

She can do division facts that are the inverse of multiplication facts.

Sometimes she can do division with remainders, but she struggles with it and I don't think she really understands it.

 

She cannot do division where the answer is a two digit number.

She cannot do divide by a multi-digit number.

She cannot do long division.

Sometimes she forgets that you can't divide by zero.

 

I expect that it will be a long time before she'll be able to do long division. Sigh.

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We used MM for 3rd grade math and part of 4th grade math. At the end of 3rd, he knew division facts, and he could do division of a simple number like 63 / 3. He didn't learn long division until MM4B (we did that section before switching to Singapore, since Singapore teaches long division in 3A, which is unusual.

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He can do long division, with remainders, dividing one number into however many he needs to, and gets the relationship between division, fractions, and multiplication (and addition/subtraction).

 

He finished Singapore 3B and just finished ch 2 of 4A, LoF Farming, and uses Khan Academy. I think if he finishes the LoF elementary series, we will divert to Penrose before starting Fractions, though.

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My ds just finished grade 3 and he knows short & long division with and without remainders.

 

This past year was our first year of homeschooling. We hit division in Singapore 3A in December and ds wasn't ready at all. We put it off for a few months, worked on math fact mastery, and reviewed everything else in 3A for a long time. Sometime around March I started trying to teach division again and he *got it* that time around. He can easily do it now. What a difference a few months makes!

 

The most helpful thing for ds was working out the problem using number discs and a dry erase board. He did long division this way for a couple of weeks.

P1010078.JPG

 

(Basically, we would have started with 5 "100" discs and tried to divide them equally into each group. How many went into each group? 2. Write down the two. We had one left over, so we had to decompose it into 10 tens. We can then divide the ten tens equally with 5 into each group... etc. I didn't come up with this. It was suggested in the 3A HIG.)

 

Sorry the pic is so big!

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I just talked this over with someone recently who explained that the concepts of subtraction and division are more difficult for children to understand at younger ages. I noticed that when I tabled subtraction for a year, my daughter just suddenly got it much faster. She was introduced to long division with a single number into a three-digit number with remainders at the fourth grade level age, but she got it much better at the five grade level.

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My DD can do division with remainders but was just beginning long division at the end of grade 3. We backed off long division a bit while I tried to help her cement fact families and multiplication tables (she's a very inconsistent learner/performer due to some special needs). Math tends to be a relative gift for her though. We had a weird math year. Hoping things smooth out in fourth grade.

 

I have no idea what is typical at this age.

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My ds just finished grade 3 and he knows short & long division with and without remainders.

 

This past year was our first year of homeschooling. We hit division in Singapore 3A in December and ds wasn't ready at all. We put it off for a few months, worked on math fact mastery, and reviewed everything else in 3A for a long time. Sometime around March I started trying to teach division again and he *got it* that time around. He can easily do it now. What a difference a few months makes!

 

The most helpful thing for ds was working out the problem using number discs and a dry erase board. He did long division this way for a couple of weeks.

P1010078.JPG

 

(Basically, we would have started with 5 "100" discs and tried to divide them equally into each group. How many went into each group? 2. Write down the two. We had one left over, so we had to decompose it into 10 tens. We can then divide the ten tens equally with 5 into each group... etc. I didn't come up with this. It was suggested in the 3A HIG.)

 

Sorry the pic is so big!

 

 

This is really neat! How did you make the discs, out of cardboard? About how many of each number would you say you needed?

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My rising fourth grader can do long division with remainders, with three digit divisors. It's not automatic yet, he has to think about the process as he works the problem, but he does understand what he's doing and does it well. He used multiple books for third grade, and he is a "mathy" kid. Many math lessons with this kid leave me feeling like I've just taught him the vocabulary for math he had already discovered on his own.

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My ds just finished grade 3 and he knows short & long division with and without remainders.

 

This past year was our first year of homeschooling. We hit division in Singapore 3A in December and ds wasn't ready at all. We put it off for a few months, worked on math fact mastery, and reviewed everything else in 3A for a long time. Sometime around March I started trying to teach division again and he *got it* that time around. He can easily do it now. What a difference a few months makes!

 

The most helpful thing for ds was working out the problem using number discs and a dry erase board. He did long division this way for a couple of weeks.

P1010078.JPG

 

(Basically, we would have started with 5 "100" discs and tried to divide them equally into each group. How many went into each group? 2. Write down the two. We had one left over, so we had to decompose it into 10 tens. We can then divide the ten tens equally with 5 into each group... etc. I didn't come up with this. It was suggested in the 3A HIG.)

 

Sorry the pic is so big!

 

We just started the division section in MM 3B so we're coming up on division like this. I like this idea very much. I think I may try it with base ten blocks, though, since we already have those and it would make it even more visual. Thanks for sharing this!

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This is really neat! How did you make the discs, out of cardboard? About how many of each number would you say you needed?

 

Thanks! I used posterboard and a 1" circle punch (from the scrapbooking section of Hobby Lobby.) I made 15 "1000" discs and 20 each of "100", "10" and "1."

 

You can also purchase them at Rainbow Resource if you don't already have a punch or don't want to cut out all those little circles by hand. ;)

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We just started the division section in MM 3B so we're coming up on division like this. I like this idea very much. I think I may try it with base ten blocks, though, since we already have those and it would make it even more visual. Thanks for sharing this!

 

You're welcome. :) I think many kids would grasp the concept with base-10 blocks. Good luck!

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Not much.

 

:lol: same here.

 

My rising 4th grader understands the concept but we haven't gotten there quite yet. (We aren't behind. We have been using MUS and it doesn't cover division yet. Though we just switched to teaching textbooks. I'm sure it's covered this coming year in 4th, but not sure when.)

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Take this to mean any child who has just finished third grade math and will be moving to fourth grade math soon or in the fall. How much division do they know? Short? Long? With or without remainders?

 

I'm a firm believer in delaying algorithms (pencil-and-paper math). My 2nd and 3rd-grade students learn to do multiplication and division together, with division as the reverse of multiplication --- that is, asking "what would I have to multiply this by to get that?" --- through making up lots and lots of oral story problems. (With remainders and without.) We use thinking strategies based on our multiplication strategies (NOT memorized math facts!) to figure answers out mentally or on scratch paper.

 

We do not do long OR short division until mid- to late-4th grade. We also wait until then to work on the last of the times table facts that the kids haven't picked up through practice.

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My dd9 just finished Saxon 3 last week. (That weird noise you heard last Thursday was me running through the streets whooping like a wild woman because I finished teaching Saxon 3 to my youngest child. :D )

 

She knows her division facts very well, and she knows long division with remainders - 3-digit number divided by a single number. But she is slow and not-confident with the long division.

 

This happened with my older dd two years ago, too, and she sailed calmly through long division when she encountered it again in Saxon 5/4.

 

HTH.

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Well, I feel a little better now. Rebecca completed CLE 300 and part of TT 4, but only has inverse of multiplication facts and short division with remainders. I printed out some fraction sheets from MM for a little extra summer work and she ran into some problems that required long division, so I was trying (trying!) to teach it to her this morning.

 

Also, her 3-4 Summer Bridge had a section on long division. :confused:

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