Remainders when dividing

I am curious. Should we teach primary school students to use the remainder concept when dividing. ie divide 26 by 5 and you have 1 left. Should we teach students to write “r1″ or “1/5″?

November 11th, 2007 in Remainders |

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3 Responses to “ Remainders when dividing ”

# 1 suz01 Says:
November 11th, 2007 at 10:09 pm
hmmm, Im afraid I dont have anything constructive to say – not being a maths teacher. I’ve never seen it written as r1 – is that a new approach?
# 2 Ann O Says:
November 22nd, 2007 at 9:20 pm
I was taught r1 when I was in the earlier grades in school and then transitioned to seeing the remainder as a fraction – 1/5.

Now I teach sixth grade math and really try to get the students out of the habit of using remainder of 1. I was thinking about this the other day and started wondering why we don’t just teach little children to turn the remainder into a fraction. It makes so much sense.
# 3 eques Says:
November 25th, 2007 at 8:07 pm
I have had many converstions with primary school teachers and all seem to agree that just teaching them to turn the remainder into a fraction just makes so much sense. As I face the year 7 class and most want to write r3 or similar, it is very difficult to unteach this!