How Many Squares? 1

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Quinetta, NH
Sunday, June 14, 2009
"My fiance and I just did this puzzle; me on paper and him in head. I got 44 and he got 46. Very fun though."
Class 5G, Derby
Thursday, January 28, 2010
"We think that Mrs Green is the cleverest teacher in the world as she got all 42!! 5G are quite celever too... :)."
Mrs Hill's Marvellous Maths Group - Form 5, Eversfield Preparatory School, Solihull
Friday, July 09, 2010
"We found all 42 squares easily. We went on to look at the chess board and found lots of squares...204 in total. What's more, we noticed lots of other really interesting patterns. Square numbers are clever things...and so are we!
Mrs Hill's last ever maths lesson at Eversfield. :-(."
Mr Cansdale, Wintringham Grimsby
Tuesday, May 17, 2011
"The majority of 8X2 of Wintringham believe it is 44! (HA)."
Mr Cansdale 8A4, Oasis Wintringham
Wednesday, July 04, 2012
"7 out of 21 think 34."

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This starter has scored a mean of 4.5 out of 5 based on 239 votes.

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Answers

42

The important thing is not the answer but the method you used to arrive at the answer. Did you have a structured approach? Were you sure that you had the right answer? Can you make up a puzzle like this for others to solve?

Extension Challenge

How many squares are there on a chess board?

A more difficult extension challenge would be to work out how many rectangles are on a chess board. The use of a spreadsheet might be useful when working on this problem.

Other shape counting starters:


	Teacher, do your students have access to computers? Do they have Laptops in Lessons or iPads? Whether your students each have a TabletPC, a Surface or a Mac, this activity lends itself to eLearning (Engaged Learning).

Here is the URL for a concise version of this page without comments or answers.

Transum.org/go/?Start=December27

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

Transum.org/go/?to=HowMany

A Maths Starter Of The Day

Answers

42

Extension Challenge