CPA Approach in Teaching Division

·     Step 1: Concrete

o    I would start simple. Give the child 4 marbles and 2 cups. Tell the child that he is supposed to SHARE the marbles between the 2 cups. Ask him to place the marbles into each cup one at a time in alternates.

o    After this has been done, ask the child to tell you how many marbles are there in each cup. The answer would be 2 in each cup.

o    Tell the child what they have done. The concept of SHARING is actually DIVISION.

o    One point to highlight to the child would be that after SHARING/DIVIDING, the resultant or answer would be smaller than the number you start with.

o    Let the child experience a few rounds of this hands-on or concrete activity until they get used to it.

o    ** Extension - In this step you could give the child 5 marbles and ask him to SHARE them with 2 cups. What is left would be the REMAINDER. Explain the concept of remainder.

·     Step 2 : Pictorial

o    For this step, the aim is to transfer the hands-on division onto paper. You can start by drawing 4 boxes and thell the child that they need to color these boxes. They need to share/divide the boxes into 2 colors.

o    Give them 2 different color pencils and asked them to color one box at a time with one color.

o    Ask them, how many boxes were in one color. The resultant and answer would give the pictorial representation of the answer.

o    This step can be extended in may ways. It is up to your creativity. I am using boxes as it is similar to the over-used model approached. You can also used lines, circles, cartoon characters and what not in order to keep the interest of the child.

o    Again, keep repeating this step until they are comfortable with it. Remember to introduce the concept of remainder.

·     Step 3 : Abstract

o    This is the final step. At this stage, the concept of division should have set in in terms of cognitive understanding from the Concrete and Pictorial activities.

o    In this step, we make use of numbers like in a proper question. The child can make use of the PICTORIAL experience and understanding as their working - which again brings us back to model approach.

o    The goal in this step would be to create the number bond awareness from their multiplication concept.