Division Word Problems: Solutions and Explanations

How to Help Your Child with Division Word Problems

Word problems are important because they allow students to apply math concepts to real-world situations. This can give them a deeper understanding of why it's important to learn math, which might increase their interest and motivation. Word problems also appear on many standardized tests, so it's important that your child is comfortable solving them.

In general, students will be most successful at completing word problems after they've mastered numerical problems. Also, word problems sometimes include unnecessary information that can mislead students. Help your child sort through the important and unimportant information. A good way of doing this is encouraging him to underline the numbers that he will be working with. For example, consider the following problem: 'Four friends go to the park and find $100. If they divide it evenly, how much money will each person get?' In this problem, the important information is that there are four friends and $100, so your child can ignore that they went to the park.

You can provide your child with additional practice by creating your own word problems at home. Be sure to use numbers that are at the appropriate level of difficulty for your child. For instance, problems for third graders should only include basic multiplication and division facts. However, fourth and fifth graders are ready to handle multi-digit divisors and dividends.

Division Word Problems and Explanations

1. There are 50 cookies and five boxes. How many cookies go in each box?

Ten cookies can go into each box because 50 ÷ 5 = 10. If your child is having difficulty, encourage her to draw a picture because this can help her visualize the problem.

2. Mary has 18 feet of streamers and wants to decorate for her party. She needs three feet to decorate each door. How many doors will she be able to decorate?

Solve by dividing 18 by three (18 ÷ 3 = 6), so she will be able to decorate six doors. This problem is ideal for third graders because it involves numbers that they're familiar with.

3. A chef wants to put three cups of rice on each plate. If there are 320 cups of rice left in his pot, how many plates can he make?

To solve, divide the number of cups remaining by the number that are to be put on each plate (320 ÷ 3 = 106 R2). The chef will be able to prepare 106 dishes. However, there's a remainder of two, which means that the chef will have two cups of rice left over.