The purpose of this activity is to engage students in recognising place value and using knowledge of multiplying and dividing by multiples of ten 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.
Sparkles were a very popular form of boiled lolly, last century, that came in packs of ten.
To celebrate days gone by, a museum is giving out a packet of 'sparkles' to one in every ten of its next five hundred visitors.
If one tenth of all of the sparkles are broken, how many broken sparkles are given out altogether?
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 recognises that “one in ten” means one-tenth so calculate 500 ÷ 10 = 50 to find out how many visitors get a packet. They also recognise that one-tenth of ten equals one, so each packet holds one broken lolly on average. Creating the rate 1 packet: 1 broken lolly they conclude 50 broken lollies are in the packets.
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The student calculates how many sparkles in total are given out using multiplication. They then find one-tenth of 500 to get the correct answer of 50.
Printed from https://nzmaths.co.nz/resource/broken-sparkles at 1:47am on the 22nd May 2024