Video Transcript
Find 56 divided by seven using the
given number line.
How can we divide a number by
seven? In this question, we need to divide
56 by seven. But we’re also given something to
help us because one way we can divide by seven is by using a number line. Where do you think our number line
begins? Well, if we’re looking at it from
left to right, we could say it begins at zero. But if we’re thinking about what’s
happening on our number line, we can see that the action begins at the number
56. We can see that we start at the
number 56 and then keep subtracting seven again and again, until eventually we
arrive back at zero.
Why might we want to take away lots
and lots of sevens from 56? Well, we can think of our question
as asking us, how many sevens are there in 56? And we can count these sevens by
starting at 56 and keeping subtracting seven. Let’s see how many jumps backwards
of seven it takes us to get from 56 to zero. 56 take away seven equals 49. If we take away another lot of
seven, we’ll have 42. 42 subtract seven equals 35. 35 subtract seven equals 28. If we take away another lot of
seven, we’ll have 21 left. 21 take away seven equals 14. 14 subtract seven equals seven. And this leaves us with one more
lot of seven we can take away before we get back to zero.
We’ve subtracted sevens eight
times. And this took us from 56 to
zero. So we can say that there are eight
sevens in 56. We could even make eight jumps in
the opposite direction from zero up to 56. So we could say zero and then
seven, 14, 21, 28, 35, 42, 49, 56. We’ve used repeated subtraction on
the number line to help us find the number of sevens that there are in 56. 56 divided by seven equals
eight.