From: Gail (for Teacher2Teacher Service)
Date: Mar 24, 2008 at 19:17:27
Subject: Re: Remainders in long division

Hi Ruth,    

I want to encourage you to consider even another way for students to write
the remainder of a division problem. How about writing it as a fraction,
using the number left over as the numerator, and the divisor as the
denominator?  Then students can read it as "so much, out of so much" like this:

37 divided by 5 is 7 with 2/5 (or two out of 5) left over. This would 
identify the meaning of that divisor, which was to make equal groups of 
that amount, or that many equal groups. The fraction remainder identifies 
the amount of the final group, so you can see how close you are to another 
whole group. 

I hope this gives you something to consider as you plan your 
instruction.

 -Gail, for the T2T service

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