Aunt Sophie's Post Office

A Maths Starter of The Day

Aunt Sophie has 3p and 8p stamps only.

It will cost 73p to post a parcel.

How many of each type of stamp should she put on the parcel?

Stamp Stamp

3p

8p

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Keywords: Starter | Arithmetic | Investigations | Money | Number Patterns | Tables

  • The Best Maths Class Ever 7cd/m2, King Alfreds, Wantage Oxfordshire
  • Wednesday, July 08, 2009
  • "At first the starter was challenging but then it started to make sense and that was when everyone started to get the hang of it. All together we got all the answers between us. The people who got the first answer were Danny, Ryan, David, Murran, Molly, Bryony, Alicia and sir. And some others got the rest of the answers."
  • N Cox, Ipswich
  • Wednesday, June 30, 2010
  • "A good starter that can be developed easily into a differentiated lesson. For example, use the minumum number of stamps, pairs of stamp values that work for all postage values (1p stamp not allowed!). What sort of pairs work for the fewest values of postage."
  • Set 1 Year 4(Mathematical Whizz Kids! ), Banks Lane Junior School
  • Wednesday, July 14, 2010
  • "We found three ways to solve this problem by working systematically using multiples of 3 and 8.
    (2x8p)+(19x3p)
    (5x8p)+(11x3p)
    (8x8p)+(3x3p)."

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This starter has scored a mean of 3.6 out of 5 based on 49 votes.

 

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