Wednesday 20 February 2013

Incredible math thinking!

All year long during our calendar activities we have talked about odd and even numbers.  We have discovered that all even numbers end in 0, 2, 4, 6, and 8 and odd numbers end in 1, 3, 5, 7, 9.  Today in calendar we looked at how many days we have been in school.  According to our calendar it is  114.  We knew that 114 was an even number and that even numbers can be divided equally so Mrs. Betts then posed a question to us - if it is even and we can divide it equally between 2 people how much would each person get?  There was lots of mumbling and talking going on.  One student put up their hand and said 59 and then someone else said, no, no its 57.  I asked them to explain their thinking and here is what they said . . . .


 I took 100 - I know that half of that is 50, then I took 14 and I know that half of that is 7 because  7+7 is 14 so then I add 50+7 and get 57


And to think these kids are Grade 2  (7 and 8 years old!)  I am impressed with their thinking and the way they could explain that thinking to our class!

Could you do that at 7 or 8 years old?  How do you solve number problems?

2 comments:

  1. Wow, excellent thinking Kind Cobras! I am so excited to see how you took a difficult problem and made sense of it. You are critical thinkers and creative problem solvers and I am very proud of you!

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  2. Well that should have said King Cobras, but you are very kind cobras too!

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