Authentic Lessons for 21st Century Learning

How Many Days Will It Take? Eating to 6,972!

Partial Quotients

Lindsay Hawkins | Published: September 22nd, 2020 by K20 Center

Summary

In this lesson, students will use questions, a book, and their favorite foods to explore multi-digit division with tools and strategies they already know. Students will also practice making conjectures (or reasonable estimated solutions). After students find a solution to the main problem, the teacher will use the students' strategies to facilitate a discussion that connects to and teaches a lesson on partial quotients.

Essential Question(s)

How are partial quotients similar to or different from partial products? How can partial products help us better understand and use partial quotients? 

Snapshot

Engage

Students use Andrea Menotti's "How Many Jelly Beans?" to review rounding large numbers and multiplying those numbers to find approximate solutions.

Explore

Students work in small groups to estimate a solution to a multi-digit division problem. Then they find the exact solution.

Explain

Students share their groups' strategies and solutions. The class connects those strategies to division with partial quotients.

Extend

Students extend multi-digit division with partial quotients to problems where a quotient may contain a remainder.

Evaluate

Students answer questions to apply and reflect on their personal understanding of partial quotients.

Materials

  • "How Many Jelly Beans?" by Andrea Menotti

  • Paper and pencil

Engage

Begin by reading "How Many Jelly Beans?" by Andrea Menotti. Read to the page where the brother says, "In a whole year I could eat A THOUSAND JELLY BEANS!" and stop before the sister gives the answer. Ask students to use a Think-Pair-Share strategy and estimate how many jelly beans would be eaten per day.