The purpose of this activity is to engage students in using mathematical strategies to solve a sequence 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.
A gardener has a triangular patch of dirt that she wants to plant broccoli seedlings in.
If she spaces the seedlings correctly, she can fit twelve rows, with one seedling in the first row, four seedlings in the next, seven in the next and so on.
How many broccoli seedlings can she plant?
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 draws the pattern of broccoli seedlings and partitions the patch into blocks of 20 to count the total number.
Click on the image to enlarge it. Click again to close.
The student creates a table of values for the number of seedlings in each row. They notice that each row has 3 more seedlings than the previous row. They add the numbers in each row in sequence to get a total number.
Printed from https://meaningfulmaths.nt.edu.au/mmws/nz/resource/vege-rows at 8:51pm on the 26th February 2024