Drill and practice can enable students to cement ideas and concepts into their heads after they have learned a certain skill or concept. This idea makes sense because as future educators, we want all students to "get it." What one has to ask is, is all that drilling and practicing making a student actually understand something or does it make them just memorize those certain skills faster and temporarily? If drill and practice is just a temporary thing, teachers should not have their students drilling multiplication, addition, subtraction, or division facts. Students need to know the real meaning behind the actual problem and concepts to "get it." .
Drilling and practicing students on division facts will allow them to memorize what they have seen and memorized, but can they really apply the skills and strategies needed to solve a division problem? When it comes to division, students should realize that each number represents something and not all problems are going to come out nice and even. Most problems that don't come out evenly all the time are more realistic. Instead of spending a lot of time drilling and practicing division facts, students should master multiplication facts and make connections between the two because this is what is going to help them master division facts. .
The practice of actually going through division problems and applying multiplication skills is what will help students understand division and its concepts. For example, if the problem is 36 divided by 9, people tend to think 9 times what equals 36. By mastering multiplication facts, students will find it easy to get the answer. Word problems, pictures, and manipulatives will also help students make a connection between the problem and actual answer. .
Drills that combine the use of multiplication and division are those that should be used and will most likely work. Drills and practice will be successful when a student is comfortable with their own strategy and apply it to solve a problem.
