Imagine three friends want to share twelve sweets so nobody feels left out. How would you give them out so that each friend ends up with exactly the same number? Would you hand them all to one friend first, or give one to each in turn?

The interactive deals counters onto plates, one to each in turn, until the pile is empty. Count the rounds together and watch how many each plate ends with. Each time, check that every plate matches.

We share these out together on the board. Each panel shows the counters shared equally between the plates, with the pile emptied. Everyone else counts the rounds aloud and gets ready to read back the division sentence before we write it.

Today we work through four new sharings together: share 14 between 2, then 16 between 4, then 21 between 3, then 30 between 6. Deal them one at a time on the board and check each answer before we move on. The last one is the trickiest, thirty counters across six plates means the most counters to deal.