Investigation Week

At the end of each term it is investigation week across the whole school so we have enjoyed a jam packed week full of problem solving, puzzles and investigations in Year 1. It all kicked off with a visit and fantastic workshop from the Happy Puzzle Company. We had to work as a team to solve different puzzles, find out what was making the problem tricky to solve and work out a way to resolve it.

Then throughout the week we worked as a whole class, in small groups, in a pairs and on our own to solve different maths puzzles and problems. Here are some of the investigations and problems we have completed. Maybe you could try any you didn’t do this week at home.

Four-pin bowling: We labelled four bowling pins with the numbers 1 to 4. We then had to work out which pins we had to knock over with our beanbag to make different totals.

Gob-stopper: We pretended we bought a sweet or toy that cost 6p and paid for it exactly. We tried to find all the possible ways we could make 6p using different coins.

 

Pick a pair: We had the numbers 1,4,2, and 8. We picked a pair of numbers, added them together, found the total and wrote the number sentence. We then picked a different pair of numbers. We tried to be systematic to make sure we found all of the possibilities.

Sum up: We had the numbers 2,4,8 and 3. We had to make the totals 9,10,11,12 and 13 using only these numbers.

Ride at the fair: Lucy had a ride at the fair. Her mum asked her to pay less than 20p towards it. Lucy paid exactly 3 coins towards the ride. We had to find all of the different possible ways Lucy could have paid her mum.