Divided Age

How old is Sara? When her age is divided by four, the calculator display ends in ".5" and when divided by five ends in ".6". How old do you think Sara is?

Calculator
Age divided by 4

Calculator
Age divided by 5

A Mathematics Lesson Starter Of The Day


Topics: Starter | Calculator | Decimals | Number

  • Transum,
  •  
  • Of course age is a measurement of time that is usually expressed as a whole number. This is unlike most other measurements which are typically given more precisely using decimals or fractions. A person's height may be 1.74 metres while the time left till lunch may be two and a half hours. It is important for pupils to think about appropriate degrees of precision when giving answers to real life problems and this starter can be extended to discuss this.
  • Year 8, The Quest Academy
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  • We multiplied 0.25, 1.25 and 2.25 by four and we multiplied 0.6, 1.6 and 2.6 by five, giving us the sequences 1, 5, 9... and 3, 8, 13... We found that 13 and 33 were in both of our sequences and made a sequence out of 13, 33, 53, 73 etc. Mr. Moore loved how much maths was in such a small, simple question. Chamel loved her pink calculator.

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Previous Day | This starter is for 6 December | Next Day

 

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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.

There is also a printable worksheet to go with this activity providing more similar questions so that pupils are more likely to see patterns and gain a deeper understanding of this concept.

Worksheet

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Laptops In Lessons

Teacher, do your students have access to computers such as tablets, iPads or Laptops?  This page was really designed for projection on a whiteboard but if you really want the students to have access to it here is a concise URL for a version of this page without the comments:

Transum.org/go/?Start=December6

However it would be better to assign one of the student interactive activities below.

Laptops In Lessons

Here is the URL which will take them to a related student activity.

Transum.org/go/?to=expressfraction

Student Activity

 


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