Unfair Sharing: Division with Remainder

Lesson Plan - Get It!

Audio:

Division is splitting into equal parts or groups, similar to sharing.

Sometimes when dividing, we can't share fairly. When we divide and have something left over, it is called a remainder.

Gather 16 pennies and draw 5 squares on a piece of paper. Now, let's consider this question:

If 16 pennies are divided among 5 children, how many pennies will each child receive?

Try to divide 16 into 5 equal groups with your pennies. Did you get something that looks like this:

There is no whole number that allows us to evenly distribute the 16 pennies among 5 groups. We can put three pennies in each of the five groups, but we don’t have enough pennies to put another penny in each.

Let’s think about this question:

• How many fives is close to, but not more than, 16?

We can see above that by putting three pennies in each group, we get five groups of three, which is fifteen pennies. That leaves one penny out of a group, or remaining.

So, let’s put this in a division problem:

Let's take a few minutes to review our division terms:

• Dividend a number that is divided by another number. 16 is the dividend.
• Divisor a number that divides another number. 5 is the divisor.
• Quotient the result of division. 3 is the quotient.
• Remainder the number “left over” when two numbers are divided. 1 is the remainder.

Remember, multiplication and division are inverse, or opposite, operations. We can also think of division problems as backwards multiplication.

In the problem above, we could think:

• What number times five will get us close to 16?

I know that 5 x 3 = 15, which is only 1 away from 16. So, the answer is 3 remainder 1.

Answer the following:

• What strategies can you use to determine if a problem has a remainder before dividing?
• What does the remainder mean if we were sharing something, like candy?
• Can you think of a time when the remainder couldn’t be shared equally?

Now that you have learned about remainders, let’s go practice finding remainders and understanding what they mean in a problem! Move on to the Got It? section.