This activity is designed to see if students are able to apply their addition strategies in order to find multiple solutions to a problem. Often students will have a method for solving an addition problem when it is written as an equation, but when presented with a more open-style problem they revert to less efficient methods.
Purpose
- Use efficient strategies to find the total of three dice
- Recall and apply addition facts
- Identify and continue number patterns resulting from addition
- Record solutions using a systematic approach
- Interpret data and report the results
Curriculum Connections: VICTORIAN CURRICULUM F-10
Year 3
- Recall addition facts for single-digit numbers and related subtraction facts to develop increasingly efficient mental strategies for computation (VCMNA133)
- Describe, continue, and create number patterns resulting from performing addition or subtraction (VCMNA138)
- Collect data, organise into categories and create displays using lists, tables, picture graphs and simple column graphs, with and without the use of digital technologies (VCMSP149)
At the end of this lesson students should be able to answer the following questions
- What do you know about this problem?
- Can you find a solution when using 2-dice? What about 3-dice?
- What strategies can help you add the total of the 3-dice?
- Does it matter in what order you add the dice?
- What is the most efficient way to add the dice?
- Can you combine two of the numbers then count on?
- Can skip counting or multiplication facts help you?
- What other strategies could you use?
- What is the lowest solution you could find? What is the highest?
- How could you record the possible solutions?
- How can you demonstrate that all your solutions are unique?
- Could a table help?
- Do you notice any patterns?
- Can you use what you have discovered to find all the solutions?
- How can you check that no other solutions are possible?
For more information, please download the attached lesson plan.
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