See if you can work out last Friday’s Maths Challenge

“I don’t understand! It’s too hard! I can’t do it!” one student call calls out. “You can’t do it yet!” the students chime back.

Every Friday, the students in 3 / 4 M are given a maths challenge that at first glance, always seems difficult.

They work in groups and try different methods to solve the task. By sharing ideas and working together, they discover that it can in fact, be done.

The students discover they need to enter the learning pit, make mistakes and that these mistakes are an important part of the learning process. They need to try, and then try again. Each time they get a little closer to the answer. They come to understand the benefits of collaboration and learn how to explain their thinking to each other.

The students sit in their small groups with a large white board in front of them and excitedly try multiple ways to solve the problem. Often the problems can be solved in more than one way.

“We are really close. Only three numbers off the answer!” one group calls out. Another child jumps to her feet. “We’ve got the answer, we worked it out!”

Big smiles and screams of excitement fill the room (plus a few more down the hall).

The class share how they came to their answers. Sometimes they explain to the class their method, or they may record their method by creating a short video clip.

We gave this Friday’s challenge to Year 6 to work on. The class thought it would be a challenge for them as well. At 3:25pm, two smiling faces arrived to share the news that they too had worked out several solutions.

So much mathematical thinking happening, smiles, screams of success and positivity about maths developing. Quite possibly maths is not just the teacher’s favourite subject!

You can try last Friday’s challenge here: https://bit.ly/3q0u68j – let us know how you go!