Close! Without an understanding of place value, it's easy to make mistakes in division like Pa and Ma Kettle did. In the long division attempt, instead of saying "Five won't go into 2, will it?" they should be looking at the two as 20. Also, long division notation isn't helpful for simple multiplication.
Then, when Ma tries to prove her point with multiplication, she uses a partial products approach but fails to multiply 5 by 10 instead of by 1 -- a place value error that can be avoided if we make sure to talk about place value as we multiply and divide.
Yes!
Without an understanding of place value, it's easy to make mistakes in division like Pa and Ma Kettle did. In the long division attempt, instead of saying "Five won't go into 2, will it?" they should be looking at the two as 20. Also, long division notation isn't helpful for simple multiplication.
Then, when Ma tries to prove her point with multiplication, she uses a partial products approach but fails to multiply 5 by 10 instead of by 1 -- a place value error that can be avoided if we make sure to talk about place value as we multiply and divide.
