Maths Problem Solving

Today we entered the "ZONE OF CONFUSION". This means we were prepared to feel a bit uncertain and confused in order to learn something new.  We worked our way through the problems below, talking with our buddies and sharing our learning. You might like to get your child to share how they solved these problems.

Tom and Ben are collecting crabs. They put their crabs into one bucket. Altogether they have 10 crabs. How many crabs could each boy have put in the bucket?

Pippa and Porsche did this:

 Charlotte has crabs and starfish in her bucket. She counted all the legs in her bucket - each crab has 8 legs and each starfish 5 legs. Altogether there were 60 legs. How many crabs and starfish are in the bucket? 

Thomas, Charlie and Jordan did this:

James built a sandcastle and decorated it with shells. Each shell is about 4cm long. He used 78 shells placed next to each other in a wavy line all around his castle. How many metres is the wavy line of shells?

Heidi Mackenzie and  Pascoe did this:

4x7=28 and 4x8=32 and then we plused them.   When we discussed this as a class we found that there was an error because 78 is not a 7 and an 8 it is a 70 and an 8. Therefore we should have done 4x70=280 and 4x8=32 so 280+32=312cm. Now we need to turn it into metres so the answer is 3metres and 12cm.

Taitania, Georgia and Porsche did this:

 In my bucket were 5 more shells than starfish. There were twice as many starfish as crabs. Altogether there were 45 items in my bucket. How many shells, starfish and crabs are in the bucket? 

We are still finding an answer to the last question.....