Sum Story

A Maths Starter of The Day

Make up a real life story for these calculations:

408 + 144

940 - 74

28 x 25

90 ÷ 18

90 ÷ 16

 

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Keywords: Starter | Arithmetic

"this was a brilliant starter for our year 6. it helped them to make questions, using appropriate things."

Janet,
Friday, March 28, 2008

 

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This starter has scored a mean of 3.2 out of 5 based on 26 votes.
 

  

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Answers

Who knows what your students came up with?

Here is an example:

On the family computer, Harry needed 408 MB of storage space for his music and Will needed 144 MB. Altogether 552 MB of storage space was needed.

They were saving up for a new computer which costs £940. They already had £74 which left £866 still to find. By doing odd jobs for neighbours they could make on average £28 a week. If they worked for 25 weeks they could earn £700. This would not be enough.

At their school there are 90 students in the year group. They are divided into 18 classes of 5 for registration. All of the students in the year group go on a school trip to see how computers are put together at the local factory. The small buses used by the school each hold 16 passengers. Harry worked out how many buses would be needed:

90 ÷ 16 = 5.625

This didn't make much sense as he knew that the answer should be a whole number. As no students would be left behind he figured out that 6 buses would be needed.

At the factory Harry won a competition and was given a brand new computer. He was so overjoyed he phoned his brother immediately and they agreed to share the £74 they'd already saved with all of the other students in their year group.

Everyone returned from the school trip happy and Harry and Will had plenty of storage space for their music.

Note to teacher: Doing this activity once with a class helps students develop strategies. It is only when they do this activity a second time that they will have the opportunity to practise those strategies. That is when the learning is consolidated. Click the button above to regenerate another version of this starter from random numbers.

Did any of your students come up with really interesting stories? Let us know here.