Dividing with Decimals

[Holly stop]

Have you checked out Open Up Resources? It’s currently only grades 6 to 8, but in Unit 5 (“Arithmetic in Base 10”) of the 6th grade curriculum there are several lessons on division and long division. I love how by using a progression of images like the ones below, we can show how the same process of division is used whether or not the dividend and quotient are decimal numbers.

From Unit 5, Lesson 11: (whole number dividend and divisor, decimal quotient)

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From Unit 5, Lesson 12: (decimal dividend, whole number divisor, decimal quotient)

To find <nobr>53.8÷4</nobr> using diagrams, Elena began by representing 53.8.

She placed 1 ten into each group, unbundled the remaining 1 ten into 10 ones, and went on distributing the units.

This diagram shows Elena’s initial placement of the units and the unbundling of 1 ten.

There’s a series of questions following this image for students to work through.

I hope this helps!

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[Janique Caseley]

Thank you so much, Holly! I will definitely check out Open Up Resources.

[Garret schneider]

You could also attack it with ratio tables! That’s my favorite way to handle division, as it reinforces the power of multiplying and dividing by 10!

[Andrea Clark]

Could you show us an example of what that could look like? I love using tables, and I struggle with conceptual understanding with decimal operations.