Coming soon: Division, decimals and mental arithmetic

Next week we will have a Year 6 maths worksheet on division with decimals, which is a good test of how well children can manipulate numbers and use their knowledge.

16 divided by 2 is easy: 8

1.6 divided by 2 can cause all sorts of problems, but, of course is 0.8.

When I try to do a question such as 2.5 divided by 5 I mentally calculate 25 divided by 5 and then divide the answer by 10 ‘in my head’ by moving each number one place to the right. There are other ways but this seems quite efficient.

For younger children a neat way to show division is to use a number line and ‘hop along’ in equal steps of whatever the number is you are dividing by.  There are no remainders to the answers on this forthcoming page, but it is also a good way to show why remainders occur if there are not enough numbers to ‘hop along’.

We will also be publishing a second page of questions on adding and subtracting multiples of 10, which year 4 children should be able to take on and answer rapidly.

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