Fifteen pennies are placed in four envelopes and the envelopes are sealed. It is possible to pay someone any amount from 1p to 15p by giving them one or more envelopes. How were the pennies distributed between the envelopes?
Fifteen pennies are placed in four envelopes and the envelopes are sealed. It is possible to pay someone any amount from 1p to 15p by giving them one or more envelopes. How were the pennies distributed between the envelopes?
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"Hi there, my name is Richard Walter and I am a secondary school maths teacher at Gordano School in Portishead, near Bristol. I have used your starters consistently over the past two years since I began my career in teaching. I think that they serve as an excellent resource at the start of a lesson in settling and engaging my pupils in their mathematics. What is more, they really enjoy them! *Richard Walter, Gordano School Portishead
"The instructions on 5th of February aren't clear enough for use. It looks good but I don't think there is enough information" G Oliver, Parkside Community School
"I am Mark Richer, Teacher of Mathematics at Churchill School. Mark Richer, Churchill School
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Keywords: Starter
| Number Patterns
The starters I find most successful in their ability to engage pupils are the number orientated problems such as the magic/un-magic square, neighbours, the once where you have the numbers 1 to 8 and a seating arrangement and the pupil has to come up with a seating plan where no consecutive number can sit next to or diagonally opposite another, the probability starters involving coins of which I can't quite remember.... etc etc. Basically the starters that give pupils a chance to have a go at them by trial and error but also allow a high degree of differentiation to engage those more able pupils who can start to identify the mathematical principles behind those problems.
Not so engaging for me are the ones which start, "Think of as many mathematical words as possible that begin with the letter 'A'." I avoid using these ones.....
I will continue to use "starter of the day" and continue to push it's use in my maths department. Keep up the excellent work! And thank you!
Richard Walter"
Monday, February 05, 2007
Tuesday, February 06, 2007
This is always a popular activity with my students.
For this amd similar activities, when we conclude I always like to ask those who were successful "Did you work this out through pure skill, or pure luck - perhaps we will never know?".
I find it particularly useful as a lesson starter to refer back to as a plenary after we have explored binary numbers.
The solution for 5 envelopes is 16, 8, 4, 2, 1. This shows that any decimal number can be generated from combining various powers of 2, which of course is what the Binary system is all about.
"
Wednesday, May 14, 2008
Excellent, I would like to see more like this
Good, achieved the results I required
Satisfactory
Didn't really capture the interest of the students
Not for me! I wouldn't use this type of activity.
This starter has scored a mean of 3.1 out of 5 based on 42 votes.
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1p, 2p, 4p and 8p
Extension: What if there were 31 pennies and 5 envelopes?