TRIPLETS

Find as many sets of triplets as possible which add up to 38

18 15 11 20
38 8 9 14
17 15 9 12
10 16 19 21
Triplets

Teacher: Collect together students' findings by clicking on the numbers above.

They don't add up to 38

A Mathematics Lesson Starter Of The Day


Topics: Starter | Arithmetic | Mental Methods

  • Mike Sendrove, Salt Grammar School, UK.
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  • A really useful set of resources - thanks. Is the collection available on CD? Are solutions available?
  • Transum,
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  • Sorry Mike, because some of the starters link to live data on the Internet there is no CD version. Thanks for your comments.
  • Mrs Lewis, Year 8, Hartford High School
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  • My class worked on this for 5 minutes individually and then we collated the results. As a class they were able to find 15 different combinations.
  • Mrs. Babb's 4th Period, Woodruff High School
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  • We only found 11...Are you sure there are 15?
  • Asteroids - Yr3, Otford, Kent
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  • We work hard on this for our early work and found 18. We're very proud of ourselves for being so smart.
  • Mr Morriss, Montgmery High School
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  • Love these types of starter as they are great for any ability. They get the students motivated if they can see that you value their answers, I collected the results on the whiteboard but had to write them all out which was a bit time consuming and would have taken longer had I got the students to do it. To make it more practical to do this, if it was made more interactive so either the teacher or student could use a whiteboard pen or click on the three numbers and it writes the numbers they picked at the side to the class can see them and if they repeat one it shows them by highlighting that its already been found. Would be a massive help with these type of starters. But the website is great please keep them coming, my classes and I love them.
  • Transum,
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  • Good idea Mr Morriss. The squares above are now clickable as you described. Thanks for your comments.
  • Year 8, Codsall Middle School
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  • We found 38 and are very proud! :).
  • Mr Chadwick, Concord Junior School
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  • We found 24 using all sorts of different combinations!
  • Mr Vairy, Corfe Hills School
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  • My year 10s destroyed this!
  • #DJStar, Kristin
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  • Switch round the numbers on one equation and it gives you like 5...
  • Mr Kavanagh's Fifth Class, Cork, Ireland
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  • We managed 36 different combinations, however we did use numbers twice and allowed all different arrangements of numbers in a sum.
  • Jack Johnson, Island School Hong Kong ESF School
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  • My class found 39, We are pretty good at this! (Year 7's).
  • Mr Matthews, Coolest Year 9s Ever
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  • We got 66 different combinations, so there (raspberry noise)....does the order count?
  • Mr C, COPS
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  • My Y6 class from Cherry Orchard DESTROYED this to the point that it didn't allow us to enter any more. YOLO.
  • Mr Holmes, Year 3 And 4 Maths Class.
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  • We found 38 different ways of making 38. Our class did as well as a Year 8 class!!
  • Buscksburn Maths, Mr Gray
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  • Sophie, The Best Home School Ever!
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  • I did this individually and I got 50!!!!
    This is so much fun!
    Thanks Transum!

How did you use this starter? Can you suggest how teachers could present or develop this resource? Do you have any comments? It is always useful to receive feedback and helps make this free resource even more useful for Maths teachers anywhere in the world.
Click here to enter your comments.

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Answers

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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.


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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=April10

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 student version of this activity.

Transum.org/go/?to=Triplets

Student Activity

 


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