It is one of the four basic operations of arithmetic which gives a fair result of sharing.

It simply means splitting into equal

parts or groups.
- Inverse operation means opposite operation. The operation that reverses the effect of another operation.

Let’s take a look on this division problem. As you can see, there are three numbers. And each number has a special name.

First is the dividend. The dividend is the number…

- Most of the time, the biggest number will go here because we usually start with a big amount and want to divide it
into smaller groups.
- In the given division problem, the dividend is the 8. That is the number that we are dividing into parts.
Second is the divisor. The divisor is the number…
- In other words, this number will tell us how many groups we will be dividing our big amount into.
- In the given division problem, the divisor is 2. We will divide 8 in 2 groups.
Lastly, the quotient. The result obtained…
- The answer or the quotient tell us how many we will end up with in each group.
- Here, the answer or the quotient is 4. So, there will be 4 in each group.

There are three ways we can write division problems. We can write it like this, or like this, or like this. Don’t get confused
because these ways mean the same. We are dividing into equal parts.
- Up until now you probably have used this division symbol the most. It works well for very simple division
problem like the ones in our fact families or multiplication table.
- And maybe you are also familiar with the second one. The fraction form. Fraction also means division.
- And now that we’re gonna be doing some harder problems, we need a new division symbol.. The Third one. Later
we will discuss more of this symbol and we will learn how to use it.
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Let’s try to visualize division. For example there are 16 balls…
But sometimes, it gets a little bit tricky because most division problems aren’t quite this easy. Like this one, 9 divided by
4. The problem here is that 9 and 4 aren’t part of fact family, so you can’t just find the answer on the multiplication table.
That’s because 9 is not a multiple of 4. There’s no whole number that you can multiply by 4 and end up with 9 as an
answer. That means 9 can’t be divided equally into 4 groups without having something left over.
- For example, if you have 9 cookies and 4 kids. And we want to distribute these cookies among these 4 kids. So,
each kid could have 2 cookies but there would be 1 left over. And in division, that left over amount is called
remainder. So, the answer to 9 divided by 4 is 2 with a remainder of 1.
- Another example, how many are you in your class? You are 13. If I asked you to group the class into 2 groups,
there would be 6 members each and there will be one of you who will not have a group. That one is what we
called the remainder.

Long Division
For example, when we are dividing 3 digit or 4 digit dividend. The key was to break up big division problem into series of
smaller and easier steps and that involved trying to divide the dividend one digit at a time, digit by digit.

Repeat the steps from 1 to 5 until there’s no digit to bring down.

The first step is to re-write your problem in this form. So, if we have 453 divided by 4, put 453 inside the tableau and
write 4 outside. 453 is the dividend, that’s the number we’re dividing up and 4 is the divisor, that’s the number we’re
dividing by. And we will write the quotient above the dividend.
- And just like what I said a while ago, we are going to break up this large number into smaller and easier steps and
that involved trying to divide the dividend one digit at a time.
Now let’s have another example. Let’s try to answer this one. Start dividing at the leftmost digit of the dividend. And right
at the start, you’ll see we have a bit of a problem. When we ask, “how many 5’s does it take to make 2 or how many 5 are
there in 2?” The answer is None! And that’s because the first digit is less than the divisor. 5 is too big to divide from 2. So
what do we do? Well, instead of just trying to divide the first digit all by itself, let’s group the first two digits together. So,
we will now divide 25 by 5.
We will put 5 in our answer line, right above the 5. Why does it go there? Because we had to skip the first digit and group
it with the 5. If we wanted to, we could put a zero above that first digit since 5 wouldn’t divide by 2 any times. And if that
helps you keep track of which answer digit you’re on, then that’s a good idea, but it’s not required.

We don’t always have to go one digit at a time. You can break the dividend up into bigger chunks of digits if you want
and apply the same procedure to those bigger chunks. You could go two or three digits at a time or even try to divide the
entire dividend all in one step. Taking bigger chunks of the dividend usually results to fewer division steps. Fewer
division steps does sound better but it’s really not. That’s because the more digits you group together the harder that
division step will be. That’s why we always try to go just one digit at a time.

If you only have to divide into one or two digits of the dividend at a time, it’s much easier because all the answers to those
smaller division steps can be found on the multiplication table (which you have memorized, right?)