Working together to solve problems in maths!

At Tamaki Primary School, we do maths by solving problems. 

Today we used this question with our class. 

(We originally only received the top yellow, and green sections.)

Lets see what different students did..

Cutting the chocolate bars in 'half'

Some misconceptions evident very quickly..
(It is actually 3/4, and the opposite to groups)

Giving one 'half' and one 'quarter' to each of the four people.

One student drew the three chocolate bars, then straight away cut them up into quarters. (Yes, she actually split into fifths by drawing one too many lines, but has fixed her mistake by scribbling those pieces of chocolate out).

Then we came together as a class and talked about how to solve it. We gave Mrs Sharma their ideas and she recorded them. Here you can see some confusion about how to add one half and one quarter - Mrs Sharma had to reiterate that one half IS the same as two quarters, therefore you are just adding three quarters.

Lopiseni thinking hard about his maths!

For the second green question, students think about how six chocolate bars can be split equally between eight people. Again, they cut up the chocolate bars and give each person one half and one quarter each.

Each of the eight people receiving one half and one quarter. 

This group drew the chocolate bars, cut them up till each person had half, then two bars were left over. As the question clearly says that no chocolate can be leftover, they cut the leftover bars into smaller pieces and shared these out as well. 

A bonus question - how much chocolate does each person get, if there are 12 chocolate bars shared between 16 people..

12 Chocolate bars shared between 16 people - one half and one quarter each.

A different group, again showing one half and one quarter for each person.

Tomorrow our teachers will give us some harder questions, because we want to challenge ourselves to be above the national standard, not just at!

Updates to come!