We had a fantastic workshop on teaching and learning division with Aarnout Brombacher on 5th August and thoroughly enjoyed watching his classroom lessons with Grade 3s and 4s. 

His key message (which coheres with our NICLE focus across workshops) is that through carefully structured problems learners can be provoked to develop increasingly efficient methods of calculation. 

Prof Graven also completely agrees with his sentiments that drilling long division in the intermediate phase belongs to a pre calculator error! The world has moved on. While conceptual understanding of division concepts and flexible and efficient methods for solving problems is key for schooling – long division would not be appropriate for: sharing 450 sweets among 10 children; for calculating how many bags of 25 oranges can be filled by 1200 nor for 3256 divided by 43 (as surely for this latter calculation a calculator device would make the more sense)

Resources

• Progression of division strategies PDF
• Brombacher - Solving Problems (The role of problems in learning mathematics)
• Brombacher - Counting manipulating numbers and solving problems (pages 42 and 48 are particularly relevant to division)

Last Modified: Fri, 15 Aug 2014 10:03:30 SAST