The purpose of this activity is to engage students in using mathematical strategies to find an unknown.
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.
A sports team shirt with your name printed on the back costs $30 if your name has six letters.
If your name has ten letters, the same shirt will cost you $38.
The cost is worked out on the price of a plain shirt plus a standard amount added on for each letter.
What is the price of a plain shirt (with no name printed)?
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 uses a diagram to represent both conditions, shirt + 6 letters cost $30 and shirt + 10 letters cost $38. They use elimination to identify the cost of each letter then subtract to find the cost of the plain shirt.
Click on the image to enlarge it. Click again to close.
The student represents the rate of letters to dollars using equations involving addition, multiplication and fractions. They work out that 10 letters cost $20 and subtract that from $38 to find the price of the shirt alone.
Printed from https://meaningfulmaths.nt.edu.au/mmws/nz/resource/sports-tops at 8:51pm on the 26th February 2024