In the previous lesson, students applied their understanding from IM Grade 3 to divide two- and three-digit numbers by one-digit divisors. Students worked with dividends slightly beyond 100 and represented their thinking in a way that made sense to them.

In this lesson, students work with larger dividends and represent problems with base-ten blocks. This representation emphasizes place value, which supports the work with division in this section. Students are asked to represent their work with base-ten blocks on paper, but that is not the emphasis of this lesson. In the next lesson, students will make sense of and use base-ten diagrams. In future lessons, students will be able to choose a representation and method that makes sense to them as they go deeper into division work.

What surprised you about how students used base-ten blocks to find the value of quotients? How might you use this in tomorrow’s lesson?