Pre-lesson preparation

Have whiteboards ready for individuals or for partners or groups to share. Workbooks should be available electronically or in paper format for groups or individuals. Have the Martys for use charged and ready to act. 

Warm-up

Share with learners the learning objectives and success criteria for the lesson (slide 2 from the presentation). Present learners a series of quick-fire division questions, initially with whole number answers and then with decimal numbers, initially linking the whole number and decimal questions but later making them more random. These questions are presented on slide 3 of the presentation.

Get learning

After learners have had the chance to revise the connection between whole number and decimal quotients, display how this process works when first the divisor and then the dividend have decimal digits. The examples in the presentation, starting on slide 4, will begin with questions that have whole answer dividends, divisors, and quotients, then the divisor will be one tenth its value. Time will be taken to explore what the change to the dividend means in terms of the question and how that affects the quotient. This will be followed up by looking at changes to the divisor.

After the two transitionary methods, learners will practice their estimation skills to determine if their answer is reasonable or not. This will involve rounding their divisors or dividends to the nearest whole number, or other value of their choice and checking it against the answer they calculate.

Time for Practice

Learners will be given practice questions where they will be able to show their work with whichever method they choose. Additionally, Marty will be used as a check to say whether their work checks out as correct or not. There is code in the teachers guide that will command Marty to perform an action to indicate correct and one to indicate incorrect, when learners type in the question and the answer they calculated. You will need to pre-program the code into Marty and have learners run the program with Marty visible on the tablet or device so that values can be entered.

Cooldown

Bring learners back together to discuss the learning. Ask them if there were any division questions they found tricker than others.

Suggested questions you might ask:

• Are there any methods you preferred – area models, array diagrams, comparisons to whole numbers, estimation?
• Did you feel that your estimates helped with your answer?
• Do you feel more confident with division after this work?

Carry out any end of lesson routines.