Cathy has 377 stamps. she wants to fill her album, each page holds 12 stamps. how many stamps does she need to fill the album

Question

We need to explain what we did as well. 

Answer 1

Each page holds 12 stamps.  That means with 377 stamps she can fill 377 stamps divided by 12 stamps per page.

Dividing 377 by 12, gives Cathy 31 pages of 12 stamps each, with 5 stamps left over.  Cathy cannot fill her album if there are more than 31 pages, or she needs 7 more stamps to fill an album with 32 pages, because 12 stamps - 5 stamps = 7 stamps.

Answer 2

We had a question just like this on our 4th Grade assessments here in Maryland.  It is designed to see if the student understands remainders. On the other hand, yours could be used to see if a student understands what information is necessary to solve a problem.  Since the number of pages was not provided in your question, you can answer it in a couple of ways.  First, you can say there is not enough information provided to answer the question

 (if the goal is to understand the necessary information.) 

Assuming the number of pages was left out intentionally, you need to show you understand what the remainder means when you divide.  Use long division to divide the 377 stamps into equal groups of 12. Your answer will tell you how many FULL pages of 12 stamps they will fit onto. Any remainder will tell you the number of extra stamps that do not make a full group of 12 that need to go onto another page of the album.  SO, 377 divided by 12 gives you 31 (pages) with a remainder of 5.  That means 31 pages will be filled with 12 stamps, and the remaining 5 stamps will have to go on another page (page 32).  Again, since they did not tell you for sure, if you assume that there are 32 total pages in the album, and 12 stamps fit on each page and there are only 5 stamps on the 32nd page subtract 12-5 to find out how many more stamps will fit on the last page (page 32).  12-5=7 SO to fill her album she needs 7 more stamps.  

Hope this helps!  Be sure to label your division work to show that the dividend (377) represent total # of stamps, the divisor (12) --represents stamps per page and the answer (31 R. 5) represents 31 pages filled with 12 stamps and a  remainder of 5 that needs to go on another page!  Good luck!