Partial Quotients to Solve Division ProblemsPartial Quotients to Solve Division Problems

Partial quotients is a division strategy that uses student number sense and multiplication knowledge to solve for division. This strategy allows students to use their thinking to solve division. Students can use any math facts they know to solve. Basically students are trying to find how many groups of the divisor (the number they are dividing by) fit in the dividend (the number they are dividing). Students will work on making estimations before solving and then use efficient groups of partial quotients to solve the problem. Two students may have the same same answer but use different partial quotients to get to that answer based on his or her thinking. While traditional long division (the standard algorithm) is an efficient strategy it doesn’t show place value and can be used as a trick without student understanding. Until students are comfortable with the meaning of division they will be using invented strategies, like partial quotients, to solve instead of traditional long division.

I attached a video below that shows the partial quotient strategy in action.