The year 3 work on division builds on the foundations built in year 2. Again, division can be seen in two ways: 1. Sharing equally e.g. 8 bars of chocolate are shared between 2 people. How many does each person get? 2. Grouping, or repeated subtraction In the same way that multiplication can be seen as repeated addition, so division can be seen as repeated subtraction. e.g. 8 divided by 2, can be seen as how many twos in eight? Children will still need practical apparatus to help them understand and work out division questions.  Hopping along a number line is especially helpful. Also, in discussion, the idea that you cannot reverse division should be introduced; in other words 12 divided by 2 is not the same as 2 divided by 12. Understanding that division is the inverse of multiplication is very important and children need a lot of work in making calculations up, having been given some information: e.g.   if 2 x 6 = 12 then two division sums can be made from this: 12 divided by 6 = 2 and 12 divided by 2 = 6. It is better to keep working with tables that children are familiar with, especially 2s, 5s and 10s, although others can be used when hopping along a number line. Several key mental strategies are used in Year 3, including: 1. The effect of dividing by 1. Know that dividing a whole number by 1 leaves the number unchanged. 2. The effect of dividing by 10. As division is the reverse of multiplication, to divide by ten, numbers can be moved one place to the right. To avoid confusion with the decimal point, keep to multiples of 10 in year 3. 3. Dividing by 4 by halving and halving. 4. Rapid recall of halves It is very important that children know the halves of numbers below 20 and have quick strategies for finding others. Much of the work in Year 3 is re-enforcement of year 2 work, however, the more practice, the better. Concepts covered include: 1.  dividing a three digit multiple of 100 by 1, 10 or 100 2.  halving multiples of 10 and 100 3. giving whole number remainders 4. rounding down and rounding up By the end of year 3 children should be able to count forwards or backwards in halves and quarters from small whole numbers such as 10 and they should be able to mark wholes, halves, quarters and eighths on a number line from 0 to 5. Pupils should be able to find a unit fraction of a familiar quantity such as one tenth of 30 or 100 or 500 and one quarter of 8 or 12 or 20. They should be able to find simple fractions of £1 and one metre and be able to say what fraction of a large shape is a smaller shape. Go to Year 3 Division concepts