Unit 4, Lesson 3
Interpreting Division Situations
Grade 6
3.1
Warm-up
Which three go together? Why do they go together?
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Jada fills 4 jars with salsa. Each jar has 10 ounces of salsa. How many ounces of salsa are in all the jars?
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Andre is filling 4-liter jugs with water. How many jugs can he fill if he has 10 liters of water?
3.2
Activity
Mai is making a bubble mixture. The recipe says to add sugar to help the bubbles last longer.
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To make one batch of mixture, 14 grams of sugar is needed. To get that amount, Mai uses 4 packets of sugar.
- In this situation, what does the value of represent?
- Find the quotient. Show your reasoning. If you get stuck, consider drawing a diagram
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Mai needs 26 fl oz of water to make a larger amount of the mixture. The only measuring tool she has is a 4-fl oz scoop. How many scoops will it take to measure 26 fl oz of water?
- Will the answer be more than 1 or less than 1?
- Write a multiplication equation and a division equation that represent this situation.
Use “?” to represent the unknown quantity. - Find the unknown quantity. If you get stuck, consider drawing a diagram.
3.3
Activity
Here are descriptions and diagrams of situations that involve equal-size groups.
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- Jada fills 4 jars with salsa. Each jar has 10 ounces of salsa. How many ounces of salsa are in all the jars?
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- Andre is filling 4-liter jugs with water. How many jugs can he fill with 10 liters of water?
Choose a situation.
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If you choose one that is described in words, draw a diagram to represent the situation. Be sure to include labels.
If you choose an image or a diagram, write a story with a question that the image or diagram could represent.
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Write a multiplication equation and a division equation to represent the relationships between the quantities.
- Answer the question. Be prepared to explain how you know.
Student Lesson Summary
When a situation involves equal-size groups, it is helpful to make sense of it in terms of the number of groups, the size of each group, and the total amount. Here are three examples:
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Suppose we have 3 bottles with ounces of water in each, and we want to know the total amount of water.
We can think of this situation as a multiplication problem, “What is 3 groups of ?” and represent it with a multiplication equation, .
The unknown value is the product. To find it, we can multiply 3 and , which gives .
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Next, suppose we have 20 ounces of water to fill 6 bottles equally, and we want to know the amount in each bottle.
We can also express this situation as a multiplication problem, “Six groups of what number make 20?” and with an equation, .
The unknown value is a factor. To find it, we can divide: . The quotient is or .
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Now, suppose we have 50 ounces of water to fill 12-ounce bottles, and we want to know how many bottles will be filled.
Again, we can see this as a multiplication problem, “How many groups of 12 make 50?” and write a multiplication equation, .
The unknown value is a different factor. To find it, we can again use division: . The quotient is or .
In any situation that involves equal-size groups, we can use division to find the amount in each group or the number of groups.
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