Teaching Division Strategies

Whew! We made it! Happy Friday, everyone!


My little second grade math intervention group has been working on division strategies. I thought I would share a few ways in which I helped my kiddos grasp this concept.




Since I work with the intervention group, my students tend to have difficulty understanding math vocabulary. Before we dove into this concept, I needed to make sure that they understood the difference between equal and unequal groups. Rather than coming out and simply telling my students what an equal group is, I made a little chart and put pictures with examples of equal groups and unequal groups. I had my students look at the examples and share with an elbow partner about what they thought an equal/unequal group was. They were definitely able to explain this in their own words after seeing this chart. 

We worked a lot with manipulatives to practice division concepts. The kiddos loved when I pulled out my stuffed animal friends to help us divide. Using the stuffed animals was a great way to help explain the concept of remainders. I had the students help me pass out manipulatives to the different stuffed animals. Sometimes there wouldn't be enough for them all to have an equal amount. That's when I would explain the idea of remainders.

 Once the students got the hang of using manipulatives to help them divide, I made this simple little division mat to help students draw equal groups. Now when working out a division problem, they quickly draw little dots in the circles. Before using this, I had them draw circles and make the dots  using a small whiteboard. Big mistake! Some kids drew their circles too small and couldn't fit all the dots inside. Some kids weren't very neat with their drawing and miscounted due to sloppiness. I whipped up this little baby in five minutes and it has saved a lot of time! I slipped them into page protectors and it's ready to go!

Now that we are really getting the hang of division and what it means to divide, I have been working with my little friends on division word problems. I created this Scoot game to help them practice the concept. They took the above division mat around the room with them to help them with the word problems. This Scoot game may even be helpful to third or fourth graders who are struggling with  division. You can download the game for free! Enjoy!

I hope you all have a fantastic weekend! 

Division Scoot