Grade 4, Winter Term, Long Division Block Week 2 ~ More Thoughts on Introducing Long Division

Having been through the process this week of bringing long division to my boys I would say that the most important thing is that the parent/teacher not approach math and long division as a scary thing. Long division is simply fast subtraction, and we all know that subtraction isn't hard.

Indeed, the boys and I took some time to work a couple of long division problems as slow subtraction, and they could see how much easier it is to divide rather than subtract. This is an easy thing to bring to children if they already have a sense of multiplication as fast addition.

Working with just the three of us I take the boys through the steps of long division, and then they each had a couple of turns doing the same. I don't bother with a black board; we each have a grid paper lesson book and we work the problems as the person who is talking us through it speaks out loud. This actually gives me a lot more information than I would get if I simply corrected problems that they had done themselves.

We'll still be working long division next week; I intend to look at our Miquon books and see if there are any supporting math lab materials that we can use. We're also going to start factoring and averaging. It should be fun!