Division Word Problems: Ring the Equal Groups Yourself

Nothing is boxed on this 3rd grade word-problems page. The toys in both stories, eight airplanes on the first card and eight kites on the second, are printed in a single loose row with no divisions drawn anywhere, and the instruction asks the child to ring the equal groups in the picture. Ben makes groups of 4 from the airplanes and the question is how many groups; Mia puts 2 kites in each group and the question is the same. Under each row is a dot grid, a dashed answer box and a line for the answer sentence.

This is the other division, and it is the one that gets skipped. Here the size of each group is given and the number of groups is what has to be found, which is a genuinely different action from dealing things out: the child circles four, circles four more, and counts the circles rather than the objects. Because the pencil has to make the groups, the page cannot be answered by looking, and a child who rings unequal groups has shown the misunderstanding on the paper where it can be talked about. The same eight objects split two ways across the two cards, into groups of four and groups of two, which is a quiet demonstration that the total does not change when the group size does.

Print the PDF free and insist on the rings before the answer box, in pencil so they can be redrawn. Counting the rings aloud at the end, two groups, four groups, is what connects the picture to the division sentence. The sharing page is the companion where the boxes are already drawn and the child deals into them; running the two on consecutive days makes the contrast clear. The two ways page puts one of each on a single sheet, and the mixed problems page adds multiplication back into the choice.