The purpose of this activity is to engage students in using their knowledge of fractions and decimals, and an ability to use operations on these, to solve a problem.
This activity assumes the students have experience in the following areas:
The problem is sufficiently open ended to allow the students freedom of choice in their approach. It may be scaffolded with guidance that leads to a solution, and/or the students might be given the opportunity to solve the problem independently.
The example responses at the end of the resource give an indication of the kind of response to expect from students who approach the problem in particular ways.
Task: A community swimming pool that was built before 1967 is 55 yards in length. It needs to be shortened to 50 m (accurate to the nearest 1/100 of a metre) to be able to be used for official events.
A retired swim coach has said: "55 yards, less one foot, plus one inch, less half an inch should make it right."
One inch is 1/12 of a foot and one foot is 1/3 of a yard and there are 0.9144m in one yard.
Would his suggestion be within the official requirements for 50 ± 0.01 m?
The following prompts illustrate how this activity can be structured around the phases of the Mathematics Investigation Cycle.
Introduce the problem. Allow students time to read it and discuss in pairs or small groups.
Discuss ideas about how to solve the problem. Emphasise that, in the planning phase, you want students to say how they would solve the problem, not to actually solve it.
Allow students time to work through their strategy and find a solution to the problem.
Allow students time to check their answers and then either have them pair share with other groups or ask for volunteers to share their solution with the class.
The student calculates, with guidance, the original length and the adjustment recommended, in metres, to solve a problem.
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The student calculates the original length and the adjustment recommended, in metres, to solve a problem.
Printed from https://meaningfulmaths.nt.edu.au/mmws/nz/resource/swimming-lengths at 8:53pm on the 26th February 2024