Some of our teams were smaller today, as students were away performing at Kids in Town. Five teams competed in today's problem solving challenges.
The first problems we solved today weren't too hard. We were able to create the patterns with matches or draw diagrams.
Drawing diagrams became more useful as the patterns became more complex and we ran out of matches.
Some teams persisted in creating the actual patterns with matches. This required the 'make it right' habit of mind to count the matches with accuracy and precision.
Some teams tried to solve the problem more quickly by drawing out the entire pattern of matches. This still took quite a long time and it was easy to lose count and get an incorrect answer.
It took many tries to count the matches in the diagram accurately.
What other strategies might we use to solve these kinds of problems? Is there a better way than using the matches or diagrams?
No comments:
Post a Comment