Maths Problems - some cool work and the solutions (as promised)

This week, we did a lot of Maths problem solving.

On Wednesday, we solved problems to do with the lockdown from the Prime Minister:

Nearly everyone had a go.  It was interesting to see the different strategies people used to solve the problems.  Some people used materials (Lego, blocks, digital dots, even pasta!), other people used adding or multiplication.  Some people had a go by themselves, some had help from an older sister or brother, and some from Mum or Dad.  Jacinda Ardern will be impressed by our efforts. 

Whichever way we tried to solve the problems, the most important thing was that we had a go and were using Mathematical thinking.  Give yourselves a pat on the back!

This strategy uses digital dots and squares - clever thinking!

This strategy uses doubles and addition - super work

This problem was the most difficult as we have not looked at decimals at school yet. 
(Teacher's Tip:  .5 is the same as a half because half of 10 is 5 and we calculate numbers in tens (10, 100, 1 000))
So you could write this problems as 5 lots of 2 1/2.

This clever strategy used pasta by snapping some pieces carefully in half and then grouping them into five lots of 2 1/2 - more awesome thinking!

On Thursday, we had more problem solving about marbles and pirates:

 (Sorry, this is elf writing, so you will need to read it very carefully, either with a real elf or possibly Mum or Dad!)


Here are some different ways we used to work out the marble problem:  these people used counters and lists of numbers.

Here are some of the different ways people worked out the pirate problem; these people used Lego, pictures and diagrams.