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Long Division Worksheets

Free printable division practice in either notation: the short division bus stop, or full long division with every step written out. Five levels from two digits by one up to four digits by two, with and without remainders. The answer key shows the complete working.

Bus stop or long5 levelsFull working keyPDF · SVG
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Four steps

How to make a division worksheet

  1. 1

    Check the times tables first

    Division fails on recall more often than on method.

  2. 2

    Start with exact division

    No remainders until the method is secure.

  3. 3

    Pick the notation

    Bus stop for speed, long division for showing reasoning.

  4. 4

    Print the key

    It shows every step, so you can find where it went wrong.

Division fails on recall, not on method

Long division looks like a division skill and mostly is not. It is a sequence of multiplications and subtractions held in the right order, and the step that breaks it is usually a multiplication fact the child had to stop and work out. By the time they have reconstructed 7 x 8, they have lost their place in the column.

If long division is going badly, test the times tables separately before assuming the method is the problem. It usually is not.

The zero that gets forgotten

When a digit will not divide, a zero must be written in the quotient before moving on. Children skip it constantly, everything shifts one place left, and the answer comes out with a digit missing. It reads like carelessness and it is actually a place value error, which is why it keeps happening.

A question where this occurs is worth several that do not. The exact-division levels here produce them regularly.

Why the working is on the key

Almost every printable division worksheet gives you an answer list. That tells you a child got question four wrong, and nothing else. Division is a chain, so one bad step corrupts everything downstream, and the useful information is which step.

The key here prints every multiply and subtract for long division, and every carried digit for short division, so the failure can be located rather than guessed at.

Related printables

The multiplication chart and math worksheet generator build the recall division depends on. Place value covers the column structure, and fractions are where remainders go next.

Answers

Frequently asked questions

They are the same calculation written differently. Short division, the bus stop, carries the remainder as a small digit in front of the next one and keeps everything on one line. Long division writes each multiply and subtract underneath. Short is faster once the multiplication facts are secure; long shows the reasoning and is what larger divisors need.

Because division goes wrong in the middle. A key that says only "168" tells you the child is wrong but not where, and the whole difficulty of division is that one bad step corrupts everything after it. Every step here is printed, so you can find the exact line that failed.

Their times tables, reliably. Long division is not really a division skill, it is a sequence of multiplications and subtractions held in order. A child who has to work out 7 x 8 in the middle of a long division will lose their place, and the failure will look like a division problem when it is a recall problem.

Forgetting the zero. When a digit will not divide, a zero has to be written in the quotient before moving on, and children routinely skip it and shift everything left. The answer then has one digit too few, and it looks like a careless slip rather than the place value error it actually is. Working through a question where this happens is worth more than several that avoid it.

Start with r, because it keeps the remainder visible as "what is left over", which is what it is. Fractions and decimals come once that is secure: 13 r 1 becomes 13 and a half only when the child understands that the 1 left over is being shared out too. These sheets use r notation.

Keep going

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Build the tables first

The multiplication chart and math worksheet generator cover the recall that division depends on.

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