Oranges,

Posters,
Ribbons,
& Lemonade:
Concrete Computational Strategies

o
for Dividing Fractions Christopher M. Kribs-Zaleta
Christopher Kribs-Zaleta,
kribs@uta.edu, teaches
at the University of Texas
at Arlington, in Arlington,
TX 76019. His interests
include the development of (measure-
ment) unit concepts in K–8 mathematics,
as well as mathematical epidemiology and
ecology. The author gratefully acknowl-
edges several helpful conversations with
Nancy Mack in framing this project.
Oranges, posters, ribbons, and lemon-
ade in a mathematics classroom sound
like recipe ingredients for a class party.
Instead, they were used as story-
problem contexts and concrete models
to help students develop computa-
tional strategies for dividing fractions.
The topic of division of fractions
is so universally associated with a
single, hard-to-explain algorithm in
U.S. classrooms that many teach-
ers, when describing how they see it
taught, laughingly cite the old rhyme,
“Ours not to reason why, just invert
and multiply!” A colleague and I set
out to walk a path toward meaningful
understanding of this operation.
Principles and Standards for School
Mathematics suggests building on
student knowledge of division of
whole numbers so that students can
develop a meaningful understanding

Vol. 13, No. 8, April 2008 ● Mathematics Teaching in the Middle School 453
Brought to you by [ Communal Account ] | Authenticated null | Downloaded 07/21/20 01:07 AM UTC
Copyright © 2008 The National Council of Teachers of Mathematics, Inc. www.nctm.org. All rights reserved.
This material may not be copied or distributed electronically or in any other format without written permission from NCTM.
 of division of fractions (NCTM 2000,
p. 219). Research by Ambrose, Baek,
and Carpenter (2003) and others has
shown that students who are working
Photograph by Christopher Kribs-Zaleta; all rights reserved

with whole numbers develop distinct

computational strategies for different
kinds of problems. For example, when
making as many groups as possible
when the group size is known, mea-
surement division, often represented
symbolically as repeated subtraction, is
used; when dealing items out one or a
few at a time and when splitting items
among a given number of groups, par-
titive division, also called fair sharing,
is used. We were interested in see-
ing whether these distinctions would
Fig. 1 Pairs of measurement (M) and partitive (P) division of fractions story problems persist when the numbers involved
were fractions. To look at students’
1. Suppose you have 2 1/2 oranges. If a student serving consists of 3/4 of an initial experiences with this topic and
orange, how many student servings (including parts of a serving) can you since most of the literature on learning
make? (M) division of fractions describes stu-
dents working at a purely pictorial or
2. Suppose instead that you have 1 1/2 oranges. If this is enough to make
symbolic level, we used story problems
3/5 of an adult serving, how many oranges (and parts of an orange) make
grounded in contexts that allow stu-
up 1 adult serving? (P)
dents to construct concrete models.
3. Sarah is making posters by hand to advertise her school play, but her Most division of fractions story
posters are not the same length as a standard sheet of paper (the width problems used in textbooks and research
is the same, though). She has 3 1/2 sheets of paper left over, which she studies use only measurement division
says is enough to make 2 1/3 posters. How many sheets of paper (and problems (for a notable exception, see
parts of a sheet) does each poster use? (P) Ott, Snook, and Gibson 1991), perhaps
because it is difficult to write a story
4. If Alberto is also making posters, but his posters only use 2/3 of a sheet problem involving sharing among a
of paper, how many of Alberto’s posters will those 3 1/2 sheets of paper fractional number of groups. However,
make? (M) the notion of a fraction as a quotient
typically draws from a partitive no-
5. Carmen is tying ribbons in bows on boxes. She uses 2 1/4 feet of ribbon
tion of division. For this reason, we
on each box. If she has 7 1/2 feet of ribbon left, how many bows (or parts
of a bow) can she make? (M) wrote problems in pairs, grounding one
measurement and one partitive problem
6. Pat is also tying ribbons into bows. Pat sees the same 7 1/2 feet of ribbon in the same context. Figure 1 shows
measured out and says, “Since my bows are bigger than Carmen’s, that’s four pairs of division problems, marked
only enough for me to make 2 1/4 bows.” How much ribbon does Pat use M for measurement and P for partitive.
on each bow? (P) Question 5, for example, is a measure-
ment division problem similar to ones
7. Anuj has been serving 2/3 cup of lemonade to each student. If he has that appear in Principles and Standards
1 1/2 cups of lemonade left, how many students can still get lemonade? (NCTM 2000, p. 219) and research
How much of a serving will the last student get? (M) studies (Sharp and Adams 2002). We
have not seen partitive problems like
8. 3 1/2 cups of lemonade will fill 2 1/3 glasses. How many cups of lemon-
question 6 in use, which require a differ-
ade does each glass hold? (P)
ent kind of thinking to find a solution
(prior to using a generalized algorithm).

454 Mathematics Teaching in the Middle School ● Vol. 13, No. 8, April 2008
Brought to you by [ Communal Account ] | Authenticated null | Downloaded 07/21/20 01:07 AM UTC
What Happened given in the earlier examples: strategy for partitive division of whole
We worked at a local Title I school with numbers, and the second step is added
sixth graders who had no prior formal 1. Partition the dividend into as many to adjust the “units” from those of the
introduction to division of fractions. We groups as the numerator (e.g., three). denominator (e.g., from fifths of a
provided materials for making concrete 2. Build as many of the groups cre- serving to servings). The student work
models, as well as plenty of paper for ated above as the denominator for question 2 is shown in figure 2.
recording work and drawing pictorial (e.g., five). This two-step solution was used
models. We also answered students’ universally for question 2, in which
questions (often with questions of our The first step is a classic dealing-out the divisor is less than 1. However,
own) while they worked. The only
formal direction given was that students Fig. 2 Student work for questions 1 and 2
could use any methods that they could
explain. At no time did we mention that
these problems involved division of frac-
tions, because we wanted to see what
sense the students would make of them.
Most students worked in small groups,
making concrete models to solve the
problems. We were excited to see two
different types of strategies emerge, one
for each problem type, each one draw-
ing from common invented strategies
for division with whole numbers. For
measurement division problems such
as that in question 1, most solutions
involved a two-step process:

1. Subdivide everything into units

of the given denominator (e.g.,
fourths).
2. Group the new pieces according to
the numerator (e.g., three).

The second step is a classic measure- Fig. 3 Students construct a two-step solution to the measurement division problem in
ment-division-of-whole-numbers question 1.
strategy; the first step is needed to deal
with the denominator that is now part
of the divisor. Figures 2 and 3 illustrate
solutions of this type for question 1.
Photograph by Christopher Kribs-Zaleta; all rights reserved

Some groups, however, used a

one-step procedure to solve question
1, making as many 3/4 oranges as
possible with a minimum of cuts (see
fig. 4). This was possible because 3/4
is a recognizable quantity and easily
modeled. With question 3’s divisor
of 2/3, everyone divided sheets into
thirds first, then grouped by twos.
Solutions to the partitive problems
also tended to involve two steps, but
here the order was reversed from that

Vol. 13, No. 8, April 2008 ● Mathematics Teaching in the Middle School 455
Brought to you by [ Communal Account ] | Authenticated null | Downloaded 07/21/20 01:07 AM UTC
Photograph by Christopher Kribs-Zaleta; all rights reserved
Fig. 4 A one-step solution to question 1 using 3/4 of an orange
Fig. 5 Students discuss the remainder in question 5 (in this model, 1 inch of ribbon
represents 1 foot).
Photograph by Christopher Kribs-Zaleta; all rights reserved
with question 4’s divisor of 2 1/3, we
found that most groups attempted
instead a one-step approach based on
the dealing out used in partitive divi-
sion of whole numbers: They dealt out
sheets or half sheets of paper into two
stacks, reserving some for the 1/3 pile,
then checked to see if what was held
in reserve was actually 1/3 of what
was in each of the full piles.
We also observed some common
errors as the students worked on
the problems. The error that stood
out most involved remainders in
the measurement division problems.
Students would often complete the
division using the concrete model
and correctly report the number of
complete groups made but then report
the remainder in terms of the original
units. For example, in question 1 (see
again figs. 2 and 3), many students
456 Mathematics Teaching in the Middle School
initially reported the answer as 3 1/4
and moved on; only after we asked for
the units did students realize that they
had 3 servings and 1/4 of an orange.
A further conversation was needed
to figure out how much of a serving
that last 1/4 orange represented. A
similar confusion arose for one group
in discussing question 5; students
considered the remainder, pictured in
figure 5 as 3/4 (feet of ribbon), until
they were asked for the units.
Interestingly, this issue never arose
in the partitive problems, perhaps
because remainders manifest concretely
in a very different way (repeatedly, as
part of each group). Instead, sometimes
students erred by mistaking the type of
division involved: for instance, divid-
ing the oranges into fifths for question
2 before realizing that this process did
not help them answer the question.
● Vol. 13, No. 8, April 2008
Brought to you by [ Communal Account ] | Authenticated null | Downloaded 07/21/20 01:07 AM UTC
(We did not get to follow up with the
tempting question of why the answer
they would get by completing the mea-
surement division was the same as the
answer they eventually found through
using a correct partitive model.)
Finally, the other misstep we saw
students make in measurement prob-
lems was to subdivide the fractional
part of the dividend into as many parts
(rather than the same-sized parts) as
they had divided the whole-number
part. In question 1, quartering the half
orange into eighths was common (one
group even went back and halved all
the other quarter oranges before real-
izing the error). In any case, though,
these last two errors were typically self-
corrected by the group when trying to
make sense of the problem.
Conclusions
This activity was just the beginning
of the learning process for these
students beginning to divide fractions
and mixed numbers. Although they
clearly came to class with some well-
developed notions about division and
representing fractions, the concrete
models they made to solve problems
shaped their approaches in new ways
and helped them identify and correct
some errors themselves. At this point,
they were ready for problems involving
more complicated quantities, which
would eventually encourage them to
move to more abstract strategies: using
pictures and then symbolic computa-
tion. Sharp and Adams (2002)
identified the removal of context and
the inclusion of remainders as two key
elements in developing more general-
ized procedures (but note that all their
contextual problems involved mea-
surement division). Some educators
have suggested that meaningful
development of computational fluency
for division of fractions may lead for
some to a common-denominator
approach (see, for instance, the second
approaches developed in Flores,
Turner, and Bachman 2003 and
Perlwitz 2004), rather than a straight
invert-and-multiply approach.
Teachers should keep in mind sev-
eral considerations illustrated by this ac-
tivity when planning their own students’
work with division of fractions. It is
important to give students the opportu-
nity to develop concrete models in their
first experiences with these problems
and to provide a balance of measure-
ment and partitive division problems.
The partitive interpretation of division,
which is often invoked in interpreting
fractions, casts remainders in a different
light, which are then more likely to be
reported correctly. Teachers may also
want to choose initial problems that al-
low one-step division of whole numbers
procedures to be carried over (by using
simple, familiar divisors in measure-
ment problems, or using divisors greater
than 1 or 2 in partitive problems) before
presenting students with problems
whose complexity requires a two-step
solution. Specific problem contexts are
also important. Oranges and sheets of
paper, for example, provide a recogniz-
able whole (as compared with ribbon
and lemonade), and lemonade can be
un-divided or re-divided, leaving no
trace of earlier divisions, whereas cuts
made on oranges, paper, and ribbon are
permanent. All these issues can prove to
be important steps down the road at the
end of which measurement and partitive
problems become one: simply division.
REFERENCES
Ambrose, Rebecca, Jae Meen Baek, and
Thomas P. Carpenter. “�����������
Children’s
Invention of Multiplication and
Division Algorithms.” In The Develo-
pment of Arithmetic Concepts and Skills:
Constructive Adaptive Expertise, edited
by A. J. Baroody and A. Dowker,
pp. 305–36. Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence
Erlbaum Associates, 2003.
Vol. 13, No. 8, April 2008 ● Mathematics Teaching in the Middle School
Brought to you by [ Communal Account ] | Authenticated null | Downloaded 07/21/20 01:07 AM UTC
Flores, Alfinio, Erin E. Turner, and Renee
C. Bachman. “Research, Reflection,
Practice: Posing Problems to Deve-
lop Conceptual Understanding: Two
Teachers Make Sense of Division of
Fractions.” Teaching Children Mathe-
matics 12 (October 2005): 117–21.
National Council of Teachers of Mathe-
matics (NCTM). Principles and Stan-
dards for School Mathematics. Reston,
VA: NCTM, 2000.
Ott, Jack M., Daniel L. Snook, and Diana
L. Gibson. “Understanding Partitive
Division of Fractions.” Arithmetic Tea-
cher 39 (October 1991): 7–11.
Perlwitz, Marcela D. “Two Students’ Cons-
tructed Strategies to Divide Fractions.”
Mathematics Teaching in the Middle
School 10 (October 2004): 122–26.
Sharp, Janet, and Barbara Adams.
“Children’s Constructions of Know­ledge
for Fraction Division after Solving Rea-
listic Problems.” Journal of Educational
Research 95 (2002): 333–47. l
457