One usually sees counters in the lower grade levels. They are physical tokens.
A counter could be any small manipulative object, such as a coin or poker chip, a sugar cube, a small piece of candy, a stone, marble, a card, Legos, or wad of clay. Often they are stackable for ease of manipulation.
To find 7 divided by 1, a person would arrange 7 counters (coins, for example) into 1 pile. The quotient is the number of counters in the pile (7).
To do a division problem that makes more sense, suppose you are asked to find the quotient of 6 divided by 3. For this problem you would arrange 6 objects in 3 equal piles. Of course, there would be 2 objects in each pile. That is the quotient: 2.
A counter could be any small manipulative object, such as a coin or poker chip, a sugar cube, a small piece of candy, a stone, marble, a card, Legos, or wad of clay. Often they are stackable for ease of manipulation.
To find 7 divided by 1, a person would arrange 7 counters (coins, for example) into 1 pile. The quotient is the number of counters in the pile (7).
To do a division problem that makes more sense, suppose you are asked to find the quotient of 6 divided by 3. For this problem you would arrange 6 objects in 3 equal piles. Of course, there would be 2 objects in each pile. That is the quotient: 2.