Maths help please

[17leftfeet]

Dd has division to do

Not allowed remainders has to give answer as a decimal

She can do it to a remainder no problem

Can someone help?

Example 526/16

TIA

I'm probably going to be wrong here but 526 goes into 16 32.875 times. The remainder .875 is surely what gives you the decimal?

But how are you working it out spotty?

If you do short division you end up with 32r14

Which can also be written as 32 and 14/16 or 32 and 7/8

1/8 is written as 0.125

7/8 is therefore 0.875

The answer is 32.875

What year is your child?
My best year 6 mathematicians would get this, maybe with a little help.

Try bus stop method

So 16 into 5 doesnt go so carry the 5, 16 into 52 goes 3 with 4 left over, 16 into 46 fits 2 with 14 left over, 16 into 140 fits 8 with 12 left over, 16 into 120 fits 7 with 8 left over and finally 16 into 80 fits 5 exactly so the answer is 32.875.

Yr 5

She's eventually figured that one out but others I've done on the calculator go to 7 decimal places -she's got no chance!

As maxsmummy has worked it out.

Long division, surely you keep going till you have a number divisible by 16. My year 5 would take time, but could plug away to get the answer.

I think that's the problem lonecat

It's taking her ages for each question and she's got 30 of the buggers to do

Could she not work them out to 1, 2 or 3 decimal places?

The instructions don't specify number of decimal places and this teacher will mark a question wrong if either the method isn't followed correctly or the answer is given in the wrong format

That's tough, mean teacher. Hope you aren't at it too long then.

As Maxmummy said. Use bus stop but make sure you have the decimal point and zeros in place first. I tell the children they need someone at the bus stop to give the remainder to. It shouldn't take long this way.

17 left feet:

I think that 30 problems (with several going to 7 decimal places) sounds a poorly thought out homework.

First - is this her first piece of work related to division to several decimal places.

Second - has the school indicated how long maths homework should generally take. (i.e. our school has a 'homework ladder' which indicates in Year 5 maths homework is approximately 30 minutes a week.

Thid - I think you need to find out whether any attempt at differentiation for your DC was made. It is not sufficient for the school to say this is the upper ability group - there is still an need to avoid discouraging pupils with overly challenging work.

My advice is to do this work for 30 minutes, make sure your DC understands the concept and then put some comments on the homework in ink (ideally in the homework book - teachers tend to disappear homework books with parental comments that make them look bad IME).

Personally I think it would have been preferable to ask the pupils to attempt these problems to 2 or 3 decimal places only as MaxMummy suggested and invite them to solve them completely for house points/ extra credit/ etc...

Bloody hell, I'm a secondary maths teacher and wouldn't give kids 30 questions like that, what a waste of their time! If they can do it, then they don't need 30 to prove it, and if they can't, then they are going to struggle with 1. I suspect the teacher isn't a maths specialist or hasn't thought the homework through.

If she can get the remainder as a fraction, it might be easier to convert the simplified fraction to a decimal rather than continue the long division. So instead of 14/16, do 7/8 (so 7 divided by 8 using bus stop).

And certainly don't give it more than half an hour, write a note saying you'd spent that much time on it then stopped. Slogging her guts out for hours on pointless calculations will do nothing other than put her off maths.

For double number division I've always used the 'bus stop' method pictured above, put the required amount of 0s after the decimal point at the very start.

I put the relevant times table up to 10 roughly at one side of the page, so that I can see quickly what will go into what number. This makes it easier to see a glance.

1 - 16
2 - 32
3 - 48
4 - 64 etc etc

It totally depends on whether the child 'gets it' too, obviously.

My youngest was doing them for fun at 7, but my eldest (12 this week) can do it, but still doesn't get it and he didn't get to grips with it at all until about yr 6.