4 Feb 2002 - Maths Problem Solving Day
Children from Goodleigh, Brayford, Bishop's Nympton and Swimbridge hard at work with problem solving.Just look at the paper they have got through!
Along with our Year 5 and 6 friends from Brayford, Bishops's Nympton and Goodleigh primary schools our older children spent an interesting problem solving day.
We learnt that the four basic steps to problem solving were to: 1. understand the problem, 2 explore the problem, 3. solve the problem and 4. check the answer!
Working in small mixed school groups the 45 children tackled mathematical problems, some easy, some hard; tried to prove some conjectures (see 1 and 5 below) and investigated addition pyramids, using numbers 1 - 6, to discover the effect on the summit answer if the numbers were put in different places on the bottom row.
We finished our day together playing 'Who wants to be a Mathematical Millionaire'....what a day!
Working together we extended our mathematical reasoning and many made new friends from other schools!
In case you are interested here are a few examples of the work we were engaged on:
1. Is it true that every even number greater than 4 is the sum of two prime numbers?
2. A tree was planted when James Wilkinson was born. He died in 1920 when he was aged 75. How old is the tree in 2002?
3. A company makes 3000 car parts a week and exports 24% of them. How many are exported?
4. I think of a number, add 3.7 and multiply by 5. The answer is 22.5. What was my number?
A baby is three and a half days old. Her twin is 302,040 seconds old. Which baby was born first and how much older is she?
5. Is it true that every odd number greater than 5 is the sum of three prime numbers, with two the same and one different?
We learnt that the four basic steps to problem solving were to: 1. understand the problem, 2 explore the problem, 3. solve the problem and 4. check the answer!
Working in small mixed school groups the 45 children tackled mathematical problems, some easy, some hard; tried to prove some conjectures (see 1 and 5 below) and investigated addition pyramids, using numbers 1 - 6, to discover the effect on the summit answer if the numbers were put in different places on the bottom row.
We finished our day together playing 'Who wants to be a Mathematical Millionaire'....what a day!
Working together we extended our mathematical reasoning and many made new friends from other schools!
In case you are interested here are a few examples of the work we were engaged on:
1. Is it true that every even number greater than 4 is the sum of two prime numbers?
2. A tree was planted when James Wilkinson was born. He died in 1920 when he was aged 75. How old is the tree in 2002?
3. A company makes 3000 car parts a week and exports 24% of them. How many are exported?
4. I think of a number, add 3.7 and multiply by 5. The answer is 22.5. What was my number?
A baby is three and a half days old. Her twin is 302,040 seconds old. Which baby was born first and how much older is she?
5. Is it true that every odd number greater than 5 is the sum of three prime numbers, with two the same and one different?