Guest LaughableLife Posted March 3, 2015 Share Posted March 3, 2015 Hi All,My 8 year old (2nd grade) is working through Singapore 3. He flew through Singapore 1 and then we just played around with math for awhile while I tried to figure out where we should go next. I gave him the Singapore placement test and he tested into Singapore 3. He's been doing well and he understands and does well with multiplication. He's been doing multiplication forever and spent a good part of his curriculum free time working on memorizing the multiplication tables. So then we hit division and it's apparently a total mystery never to be solved. I'm stumbling over how to explain it to him even with the Home INstructor's Guide because it seems like we missed some of this in Singapore 2. And he just seems totally baffled by math for the first time in his life (and he has a low tolerance for feeling baffled).How/where do I back up to teach division? Should I buy Singapore 2 and just do the division with him? Should we just stop and memorize division tables? I don't even know why he's confused since he multiplies so well and I am not a mathy person, but I expected to make it farther than third grade math with him.... Thanks Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Kiara.I Posted March 3, 2015 Share Posted March 3, 2015 Have you met number bonds? Or part-whole circles, or whatever they're called (different programs use different names.) Like this: http://fivejs.com/teaching-math-basics-with-number-bonds/ Have him do some multiplication with those. Then have him do some where you give him the answer (the "Whole") and one part, and ask him what other part he'd need to get the whole? So give him 30, and 5, and ask him what he'd have to multiply 5 by to get 30. Chances are he has NO problem with that. Do those for a bit, using the number bond diagrams. Then introduce the topic of it being called division. Have him write BOTH equations for it. 5 x ____ = 30; 30/5 = _______ Play around with those for a while. See if that gets him over the panic that's set in. 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
wapiti Posted March 3, 2015 Share Posted March 3, 2015 I would look at the TOC for Singapore 2 to see everything that you skipped, just in case there's more that he's lacking. If there's only the one topic, rather than buying a half or whole level of Singapore, perhaps an inexpensive MM topic book could fill the hole. I don't think there's such a thing as division tables to memorize. I'd refer to it as backwards multiplication. Once he understands that, knowing the multiplication table should be enough, though it may take more practice to recall it backwards as well as forwards :) 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
kbutton Posted March 3, 2015 Share Posted March 3, 2015 You might check out some Education Unboxed videos online as well (free). They explain things conceptually and visually with cuisinaire rods. I think a LOT of kids hit this speed bump, so don't panic! Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Kerileanne99 Posted March 4, 2015 Share Posted March 4, 2015 Something that was a lot of fun and did the trick when my dd was learning to think in terms of division and number bonds was a really fun game I found on YouTube called 60-second sweep. I will link the video, which also has the honeycomb 'chart' you can print: Basically, it is a chart of all the products for the multiplication of numbers 2-9. The goal is to go through them all in under 60 seconds naming the factors. It sounds deceptively simple but it really helped Alex think 'in reverse', and tie it all together. Obviously you will want to make sure he understands division itself, but the game is perfect for getting those facts down and thinking in terms of number bonds. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest LaughableLife Posted March 4, 2015 Share Posted March 4, 2015 Thank you all so much! Those are all great ideas and very practical. <3 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
blondeviolin Posted March 4, 2015 Share Posted March 4, 2015 A lot of times I will phrase division questions as "how many times does 5 fit into 40?" Or "7 whats make 42?" My oldest stumbled with "56 divided by 8," but if I had her rephrase it into "56 split into 8" she would get it. I really want my kids to realize that division is just splitting things into equal parts. When that light bulb goes on, they can grasp how many equal parts make X. My 7yo gets this naturally. My 8yo needed some scaffolding. Both are okay. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
IsabelC Posted March 4, 2015 Share Posted March 4, 2015 What I never realized until I started teaching division to my kids, is that they have to actually learn that it can mean different things. Back when I was at school, we were taught to read it as "how many". So 12/3 would be "12 how many threes?". It took me an embarrassingly long time to figure out on my own that as well as meaning "how many threes can you make from 12" it also means split the 12 into three piles, or something like "share 12 items between three people, how many does each get". Of course that is intuitively obvious once you remember that multiplication is commutative, but I think some kids need it to be explicitly pointed out, and modeled both ways with manipulative. I've also read somewhere (sorry I forget where) that some kids automatically know division tables once they know multiplication tables, while other kids don't make the link and actually need to learn division facts as a separate thing. 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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