Something I found particularly interesting was how partitive division is harder for students than measurement division. I thought that finding the number of groups is a tough concept to grasp, so clearly I thought students would find measurement division to be harder than partitive. I now understand that it is harder to figure out how many are in a set of groups because this allows students to use trial and error which can make solving the problem much harder. This is definitely something I learned.
I also thought the section on remainders in division was very interesting. I remember that when doing division we would write our solution with R1 (for remainder 1). We never did much with the remainder until we started to be more versed with fractions. However, I learned about how the remainder can be the solution to the problem such as in the following problem from page 44:
Mrs. Baker has 17 cupcakes. She wants to share them equally among her 3 daughters so that no one gets more than anyone else. She also wants to use all the cupcakes up. If she gives each daughter as many cupcakes as possible, how many cupcakes will be left for Mrs. Baker to eat?
I really like this approach to using the remainder within division problems, because it is a different way of thinking of what is left over than what I am used to from my schooling. I like it because you don't feel as though the remainder is wasted.
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Anne,
ReplyDeleteI share the same interest with you when it comes to how partitive division is harder for students than measurement. When I was in elementary school I always used trial and error when solving math problems such as division and I am now aware of how I made these problems more difficult for myself. I also thought the remainder problems were interesting because I do not ever remember learning about remainders through a story problem like the one you stated above I remember doing it the R1 way and I believe I would have had an easier time learning about remainders if I were exposed to story problems. I found these chapters to be very interesting and I have learned so much about math in these past four weeks that it kind of scares me!