Long Division Games for the Classroom

Learning division can be a little bit of a chore at time for kids.  As a teacher, long division games for the classroom can help you as you're teaching long division and your students will love you even more than they already do!

Leftovers

Teaching Long Division

This game is great to use in class or at home for helping students get an understanding of long division.

What you need: 15 – 50 beads or counters of some kind, a pair of dice, sheet of paper for each player, pencil for each player

How to Play:

• Decide how many beads you will play the game with.  You can play with as many as you want, the more beads, the longer the game.  
  
• Roll the dice to see who goes first.
• The first player rolls the dice.  She will start out with all of her beads and divide that number by the number she rolls on the dice. 
  

For example, let’s say you decide to play the game with using 30 beads.  Player 1 rolls a 7 on the die.   The player will then see how many groups of 7 can be made from the 30 beads.  Are there any beads leftovers that cannot make a group of 7?  If so, the player gets to keep the leftovers as points.  In this example the player would make 4 groups of 7, and would have 2 leftovers.

• Each player then writes the division statement: 30 ÷ 7 = 4 r2. (meaning 4 with a remainder of 2)
• It’s player 2’s turn.  Player 2 will only have the remaining 28 beads since player 1 keeps their 2 beads in their pile.  Player 2 rolls the die and divides the number rolled into the remaining 28 beads. 
  

Let's say player 2 rolls a 6 on the dice. 

•  Player 2 makes as many groups of six beads as possible.  Are there any beads left over?  If so, player 2 keeps the leftovers for points.
• Each player writes the division statement as before: 28 ÷ 6 = 4 r4

• Play continues like this until someone rolls a number larger than the number of blocks left to divide.  For example, if there are 4 blocks and a player rolls a 6.  There can be no groups of 6 made so the game would end.
• The winner is the player who has the most leftovers in their pile!
• Once you are familiar with the game you can add another step.  After writing the equations the player who rolled makes up a word problem to go with the equations she wrote.  Example: 15 ÷ 6 = 2 r3.  There were 15 cookies to share equally among 6 children.  Each kid got 2 cookies and 3 cookies were leftover.
• You can also increase the number of blocks or beans you are dividing (18, 21, 24), or use a die with more sides!

For more long division games for the classroom you'll probably enjoy checking out our Driving Into Division game.  Just print off he game board and you're ready to go!

Long Division Tutorial: Do Monkeys Sniff Brown Rats? Have you ever used this one to help your students remember the steps to long division.  Guess what the bold letters stand for.  Remembering the steps is most key.

Long Division Practice: Brush up on long division skills with this interactive online division activity.  If you need to learn or brush up on division skills click on link above.

We'll be adding more long division games for the classroom soon, so be sure to bookmark us.

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