This Excel file just lightens the computation burden for division, allowing the teacher and student to discuss the process and explore the relationships between the process elements.
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Some terms: the Dividend (quantity to be divided) is divided by the Divisor to produce a Quotient with possibly a Remainder.
Personally, I like to have some investigative activity somewhere in the mix, whatever I'm teaching.
Here's a few starter ideas for division (clearly depending on the level of your students):
- You may wish to draw attention to the change in remainder as the dividend increases in steps of 1 or in divisor-size steps.
- For a specific divisor, ask students for a dividend that gives a specific remainder. For example: ask students to choose a dividend between 210 and 220, which when divided by 6, gives a remainder of 3.
- For divisors of 3, and also of 9, invite students to notice a connection between the dividend's digit sum (the sum of the digits in the dividend) and the remainder. And then to account for the relationship observed.