Checking your quotient

The students will be completing a worksheet on their times tables.  Pieces of the table are missing and students can use their knowledge of multiplication and division to fill in the blanks.  Seeing the connection between multiplication and division helps students divide more fluently.  

Another great video from learnzillion.com will be used to show the students how to check their solutions using the distributive property.  I chose this because the distributive property allows students to check their work using mental math, instead of multiplying the quotient by the divisor where other mistakes could be made.  Students will see how the distributive property connects to division and they will also see that there is no need for a calculator when dividing multi-digit numbers.

During the video, students should be watching and taking mental notes.  We will be applying these strategies during their practice time.

I’ve chosen two problems, out of context, to practice checking our quotient.  Each problem already has a solution and the students will need to check the work to see if the solution is correct.  One problem has a remainder and one does not.  It’s important for the students to see remainders so they know what they are and how they need to work with them.

I want each student to use the distributive property to check the solution.  They’ve seen how to do it in the video, but may need some additional modeling.  As students are trying to work the distributive property, walk around to check to see that they are using it correctly.  If there is a lot of confusion ie: don’t know how to start, or using wrong places values, then stop and model for them.  I would ask them what to do first and be the scribe at the board.  They need to be the ones doing all of the work. 

Musical Chairs is a form of Around the Room.  I’ve created 6 problems (make doubles of each) to put at each group.  Students will be required to do 6 problems.  The duplicate problems are so that more students can be working at the same time. 

Problems for musical chairs should work like this:

Circle the word that means to divide (SMP 1)

Write the expression (SMP 2)

Solve

Check your quotient using the distributive property  (SMP 7)

The problems I chose do not have remainders.  I did this because I really wanted to see how students manipulated the distributive property to check their quotients.  I wanted them to feel successful when using both long division and then using the distributive property to check.  While students are working on their problems,  I will be walking around checking to see how they are working.  

Students will be working on making the connections between multiplication, division, and the distributive property (Connect 3). On the lines that connect two words, the students will write a sentence representing the connection.  In the middle, the students will summarize what they learned today about those 3 words and their connection. Three way tie is a powerful tool to use when making sense of mathematical concepts and explaining relationships in descriptive ways (SMP 1 and 6).

This can be collected as evidence of student learning.