How can you determine the tenths and hundredths places in the decimal 1/11 using pennies and dimes or a subdivided square?

Question

I can't use an algorithm to change the fraction to a decimal.

Answer 1

Hi, Kathleen!

 

Okay, so Common Core can be a little confusing at first, but can actually be a good learning strategy.

Let's use a subdivided square (representing 1 whole),  which is divided into 100 equal blocks(each representing 1/100th).  

Then, you can circle groups of 11. This will show you how many groups of 11 are in 100.

You will get 9 groups of 11 (Or 9 hundredths) and there will be 1 more block left. This block could in effect be broken into groups of 10 (thousandths), but since you are unable to circle 11 from that, you would need to break it into 100 blocks instead (representing ten thousandths) and again you could circle 9 more groups of those (ten thousandths).

 

If you do this, you will see that your answer to 1/11 = .0909....

 

If you use the algorithm, you will get the same answer.