The purpose of this resource is for teachers to introduce and practice how to interpret remainders with 4th grade students. There are three types of interpretations of remainders that I teach my students: (1) Add one to the quotient (used for situations involving people, animals, and other things that you cannot leave out), (2) Ignore it (when rounding up does not make sense), and (3) Use the remainder (when you want to know how much will be left). I learned during my first year of teaching 4th grade that students would solve for a division context problem but fail to interpret the remainder properly. With this activity have students read the problem and without solving it determine which of the three remainder interpretations they will use.

This can be used as a remediation tool with 5th grade, but please note that none of these problems involve sharing the remainder as the 4th grade standard involves whole number quotients and remainders.