Can you do long division?

[Noperope]

Attempting to help dd with her 11plus homework and feeling more and more stupid by the minute. Could you work out 324 divided by 4 with only pen and paper? No cheating and you must show your work, not just write the answer!

Yes but that’s not long division is it? It’s short division?

In my head. 8 x 4 is 32, 4 x1 is 4. 81

Didn’t realize our curriculums were so different. It’s just regular required year 10 math where I live.

From what I understand, it's something that's taught in primary schools and then not revisited again at secondary, it's not tested on GCSE papers and some pupils might come across it if doing polynomial division at A-level maths.

Maybe it's not that useful..and there are other ways of teaching number patterns and other ways of dividing.

But I guess it's something that they did in the old days, like tables to 12 x, which have still hung round in the curriculum

Yes I can do long division. The way I was taught in the 80’s. I can’t get my head around the way my kids do it now.

Where are you based?

in the UK it’s on the y6 curriculum (age 10-11). I’ve taught this age group for years and the majority find it hard, it tends to take up 3-5 lessons to get most of the class to get it.

I don’t know when polynomials come up, but I got an A in GCSE maths and never came across them, and other people on here have mentioned A level maths. In the UK almost everyone takes GCSE maths (though there are some topics lower attainers would skip I think), A level maths is an option but not one many students pick, and to do so they’d be pretty capable mathematicians, and capable of picking up long division then if it was so essential for this polynomial thing.

Nope. Can't do any sort of division.

What is the bus stop method?

No I hated Maths.
Totally forget how to do it but I think it was a long down the way calculation involving carrying numbers over.
Took up loads of room in my jotter back in the day.

My brain has never processed long division properly. I "learned" it in y6 (early 90s, early days of the Nat Curriculum) and it didn't sink in.

In y10 I confessed that I couldn't do it, and a couple of my friends piped up that they struggled too, and our teacher spent a good chunk going over it with us. It didn't really sink in.
I got a C in maths, my lowest GCSE and was in set 2/5. Some areas of maths I get on with fine, but there are some blind spots that do not compute well.
In mental arithmatic, numbers jump around and either skip a stage or duplicate. I can do much more pinning them down on pen and paper.

DH once very patiently spent an evening going through it with me... it did not sink in.

It's not held me back in the routine numeracy of life. Fortunately my maths teachers have been wrong in their claims that I won't always have a calculator with me, but to be fair, I don't often have to whip my phone out to check things.

Despite phones/ calculators though, it is useful to teach (or at least attempt to) the processes of how numbers work because that's what gives it meaning.

Yes, of course.

No.
What's the bus stop method ?

It's divided by 7. OP clarified.

yes

but not the way taught in schools, it confuses me. I partly work out in my head and on paper its lowered my gcse grade

I didn't teach ds this but he does the same

we are both very good at mental arithmetic but written down it becomes more complicated

Bus stop is just another term for short division. Because the numbers are standing next to each other under what looks like a bus stop.