04/25/06: What is a Remainder?
While dropping off my children today, Alexa asked what a reminder is when it comes to division.
“ All remainder says is how much is left”.
“That’s it?”
“Yep.” (when answering her questions about math, I pay particular attention to keep the answers as short as possible. I pretend that I too am an 8-year old and am just having a conversion with her like her friends).
“Hm…, can we try one?” (Note: here, I waited for her initiation to try new things. If she hadn’t prompted herself, at most, I’d ask one follow up question such as, wanna try one? If the answer comes back negative, I move on to something else. Hey, after all, we are adults, and we know a lot more to share than math, right?)
“91 divided by 9”
After some thoughts, she said, “ left over is 1”.
“wanna know a quicker way to say it?”
‘sure’, now she is all pumped up!
“we say it like a pro: ‘10R1’ – as in the answer is 10 with 1 as left over or we call it ‘remainder’”
“Cool!”
Happy Zen Math!
(c) Feenix Pan, 2007. All rights reserved.