Outnumbered

A Maths Starter of The Day

Which group of four numbers, arranged in a square, has the largest total?

  A B C D E F G H I J
1 4 1 3 4 3 1 5 1 4 5
2 4 3 5 2 4 3 1 3 3 3
3 2 2 3 3 1 4 3 3 1 1
4 2 5 1 2 2 3 3 3 2 2
5 3 1 4 3 5 2 5 1 4 2
6 1 1 2 3 2 2 1 1 2 1

Which group of four numbers, arranged in a square, has the smallest total?

 

 

Starter of The Day Transum Mathematics Topics


Topics: Starter | Arithmetic | Mental Methods

  • Transum,
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  • Without using pen and paper, completely relying on your mental abilities, how would you, as a teacher, work on this challenge? There are buttons below to change the range of numbers used in the grid. Does your strategy work for larger numbers too? This type of mental exercise builds abilities to cope with multi-step mathematical solutions required for more complex problems.

How did you use this starter? Can you suggest how teachers could present or develop this resource? Do you have any comments? It is always useful to receive feedback and helps make this free resource even more useful for Maths teachers anywhere in the world.
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Answers

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Change Numbers

 

Note to teacher: Doing this activity once with a class helps students develop strategies. It is only when they do this activity a second time that they will have the opportunity to practise those strategies. That is when the learning is consolidated. Click the button above to regenerate another version of this starter from random numbers.

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Online Maths Shop
Laptops In Lessons

Teacher, do your students have access to computers such as tablets, iPads or Laptops?  This page was really designed for projection on a whiteboard but if you really want the students to have access to it here is a concise URL for a version of this page without the comments:

Transum.org/go/?Start=July3

However it would be better to assign one of the student interactive activities below.

Laptops In Lessons

Here is the URL which will take them to a related student activity called Discombobulated.

Transum.org/go/?to=DaNumber

Student Activity

Curriculum Reference

See the National Curriculum page for links to related online activities and resources.

For Students:

 

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