Keywords - Division, remainders, numbers.

Purpose - Explaining division and remainders.

Pre-requisites - Knowing how to count.

Description - The trainer delineates a work space which is referred to as a raft. The participants walk within the perimeter of the raft trying to remain evenly distributed within the space. The trainer can guide the participants verbally with a stop and go or with a percussion instrument or piece of music: when the music is playing they walk. When it stops, all the participants make contact with each other forming only one large group. At this point, the trainer asks the participants to divide into N equal groups and improvise being one animal all together. Subdividing into N equal groups is obligatory except for certain people who may be excluded because the total number of participants isn’t exactly divisible by N and therefore the division would have a remainder. In the division, the total number of participants is the dividend and N is the divisor. The quotient of the division is the number of people in the subgroups and excludes the subgroup of remainders.

Each group has to use their voices and bodies together to re-create the animal the trainer names. The subgroup of the remainder builds only a part of the animal. Once all of the animals have been formed, the trainer asks each animal to perform in front of the rest of the group, showing off their way of moving and the sound they can make. After the performance of all the animals the trainer shares the numbers for the division just carried out, with the group: dividend, divisor, quotient and remainder.

E.g: If the group is made up of 20 participants and the trainer asks them to form 4 groups to create a cow, groups of 5 people will be formed and we’ll have a herd made up of 4 cows in which 5 is the quotient, 20 the dividend and 4 the divisor; if the trainer asks to form groups of 6, we will have a herd of 6 cows made of 3 people each and a remainder of 2.

Duration - About 30 minutes.

Variations - The same activity can be carried out asking the subgroups to form objects or abstract concepts with their bodies instead of animals. These variations are more complex to achieve, especially the abstract concepts, so it is advisable to propose them to groups with a good capacity for abstraction