Please help-
looking for alternative ways of teaching division other than what was taught to me as a child back in the 80's-the "long division"-
especially for problems such as

356/20-etc....

[BookMuncher]

I don't teach an upper grade and I really don't have another algorithm for you, but in college we were forced to look at stuff like this and reteach ourselves.

Do you know why the long division way works? More specifically- do you understand what you're doing when you take the outside number (can't remember terms!!) into the beginning of the inside number? Do you know why we multiply? Subtract? I used to not really know this until I sat down and played with it. Now I can do long division problem in lots of other ways, and I've tutored some older kids to find their own ways of understanding it.

Ask me if you have specific questions and I can try to explain.

[pinkjuice]

I don't know if this is helful, but we teach it in smaller steps.

1. Split up the place value

300 + 50 + 6

2. Start with the hundreds, How many 20s are in 100? If you don't know, skip count. Find the answer to 20s in 300. Save any leftovers and tack them onto the 10s.

300/20=15

2. Go to the 10s. Are there enough? Can you divide the tens into groups of 20? Save any leftovers and tack them onto the 10s

50/20 = 2 R.10

3. Go to the 1's. Are there enough? If there aren't enough, write your remainder or go to the decimal.

16/20 won't work.

So... 15+2+R.10 = 17 R. 10

On paper, it's a long horizontal rectangle with the original problem written on the left. The child rewrites a new problem for each place value then adds up the answers at the end to write the answer onto the original problem.

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Not the most amazing solution, but definitely breaks it up from that HUGE long division problem! Also, it will teach kids the thinking so when they are ready to use shorthand notation in the algorithm, they will transition smoothly.

im a kid and i do not know ho to do divison in more then one way? help help help