Children\'s Mathematics

the same response on paper. Every child was willing to discuss their ideas.

A variety of responses

Harry, 5:4, remembered the twins story and used that to represent his findings. He

used cubes to divide the amounts out. On his paper he had drawn two very large

figures with their arms extended and he had written the numeral nine between

them. He explained ‘nine is not a sharing number. It makes one of the twins get

more, so that is not fair’. He said ‘two is a sharing number’: he worked this out

mentally. Harry had understood the concept of sharing and was able to represent

that on paper. He was able to express his opinion about the situation and had

worked out that one of the twins would get more. He also understood that two

could be shared. Harry had a good knowledge of numbers to build his ideas of

division on. He was concerned with the inequality of the situation, which I helped

the children explore at the end of the lesson. Although he did not talk about ‘one

left over’, in future sessions he may have been interested in discussing this. This

would help him form ideas of remainders which, in turn, will ease his way into

more difficult division concepts.

Figure 9.5a and b Young children’s division – Elliot and Charlene

Elliot, 4:11, took three cubes and shared them between three people. He drew the

number three and made some other marks beside it (see Figure 9.5a). Elliot did not

wish to tell his teacher about it. He had taken the task and made his own meaning

from it. It seemed that Elliot was focused on the quantity and attaching a numeral

to it. He made sense of the task by sharing the cubes, one to each person. In future

sessions Elliot’s interest in quantities and counting will become the focus and this

was be extended in everyday sessions and in the play areas.

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