maths- division in year three/four. advice needed please.

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hope someone can help me.
my 8 yr old is near the bottom of his class, but we are managing to do lots of work at home at the moment, and am hoping this will help him when he is back at school starting year 4. unfortunately i ve lost the coppy of the year three curriculum, and am not sure just how much division he needs to do. am using a workbook in which he finds the numeracy work to be fairly easy, but it is asking him to do 81 divided by 3! even i had to think for a moment. he says he hasnt done long division yet.
should i teach him, assuming the class did it, but his group didnt. or leave it?

normally getting him to do anywork is a nightmare, and gettting him to do any literacy work still is , but he likes maths. hence my eagerness.

Does he know (or is meant to know) his times tables yet?

If he does then I expect that the method will be to split it up into 81 divided by 9 (which is 3x3). 9 x 3 giving an answer of 27. I've not explained that very clearly have I?

But I'm sure at this stage long division doesn't come into it. I think my dd has just started doing it and she's just finished year 4 and is one of the brighter ones, wheras ds who has just finished year 3 has not done it at all. On the other hand he doesn't know all his tables yet ...

so thats how its done.
i was stumped!
yes he has done his times tables, and is quite good at them. so all i need to do is point that technique out.
thanks a lot robina, youre a lifesaver.

Well I'm glad you understood what I meant

hi, my ds has just finished year 4 and they only seemed to cover long division towards the end of it (mainly multiplication at beginning of year)

He was sent home with 'strategies' for multiplication and division which really helped (after lots of practicing) but find out which strategies your school uses.

Funnily enough my younger ds is about to go into yr 2 and although he can handle numeracy really well, he cant read or write to save his life, so we have been practicing keywords all summer - bless him!