This interactive whiteboard resource is designed to facilitate a class competition.  The children in the class are divided into 4 groups and allocated a team colour: red,green, blue or yellow.  Students follow a printed instruction set to generate a number.  Once the team have discovered the combination the team captain goes to the interactive whiteboard, selects his team colour and then enters the combination.  Once the number is entered he/she presses the key button.  If the combination is correct the appropriate button slides away to reveal a jewel.  If the combination is incorrect that team ’s light goes out and they are locked out for a number of seconds.  The winning team is the first to get and enter the correct combination.  Mis-keys can be corrected by pressing the ‘E’ key.

In the first instance there is one sheet available to download that can be used for students to follow and find a combination.  This is designed with a session in the computer suite in mind.  The teams will need to use the internet to research facts to help them discover the combination.  Teams that make efficient use of planning, communication and teamwork will have an advantage.  A good tactic that the students can be left to discover themselves, or informed of, is for some of the team to go ahead in the questions to find necessary information for when it is needed by the students who are performing the calculations.  In this way students can develop research and social skills as well as applying their existing mathematics skills.

Teachers can set the number of seconds incorrect answers lock out a team  by clicking the solitary triangular button (with the double arrow on it) and then adjusting the slider on the pop-out panel to the desired amount of time.  On this panel the appropriate question code should also be selected (there is only ‘number 1′ question sheet available at the moment).

New question sheets will be released over time.  It is hoped that teachers who feel they can make use of this resource will create new ones and submit them for others to use.  Themed question banks could be created this way where the research is focussed on a particular subject.  Or sheets that use only maths skills could be created so that the internet isn’t needed.

Go to interactive whiteboard resource.

Get Combination Sheet Number 1.

Get the answers for Combination sheet number 1, this is a word document with the working out for the sheet above that can be modified for creating new question sheets.  Once you have created the new sheet submit it to the email address below and it will be formatted and its final code added to the resource.  Please state what credit you would like to receive i.e. name or school etc.

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An excellent book for finding interesting maths challenges for students is Professor Stewart’s Cabinet of Mathematical Curiosities.  They can be used for setting tasks that combine areas of maths knowledge and they also highlight to students that maths questions aren’t solved in seconds but require devising strategies to solve them.  They are superb for developing deeper thinking skills.

One task in the book is called New Merology originally developed by Lee Sallows.  The interactive whiteboard resource here supports demonstrating this puzzle to students.    The challenge is to find a unique value for each of the letters in the spellings  of the words zero to twelve so  that when added up they equal the value of the word in which they are in.  So the number chosen for the letter “O” added to the number chosen for the letter “N” added to the letter chosen for the letter “E” must add up to 1.  Of course the letters appear in other words so by picking a value for “N” you also have an impact on the sum of the letters in “T+E+N”. 

The resource allows you to chose a letter then select its value by dragging the red marker across the top. If any of the values you have chosen are duplicated a warning will show.  The resource will also sum the values for each word.  While this resource could be used to aid in the solving of the problem a more effective use is to just use it to demonstrate the problem to the class and to use it to discuss different approaches to the problem as it avoids lengthy recalculations when a value is changed.  The student’s maths skills will be improved more if they work at the puzzle manually.  This puzzle will then give them a practical application for their skills in adding negative numbers as well as the deeper thinking skills involved.  A printable resource is also available below to give a structure to the puzzle.  It may be useful to laminate the print out so that students can use non-permanent markers to to write with and rub out as they change values.

The solution will not be included here as it is available in the book  Professor Stewart’s Cabinet of Mathematical Curiosities
and the intention here isn’t to take anything away from the book but rather support its use in the classroom.  The range of values used in the solution is from -7 to 11 as shown in the resource.

Go to interactive whiteboard resource.

Get printable resource.

Report any problems in the comments.  Also, do you find resources such as this interesting  or are the more usual teaching resources more useful?

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 An interactive whiteboard resource to accompany a puzzle published in an old book by Henry Ernest Dudeney.  The puzzle is a useful one for teaching deeper mathematical thinking because while it can be solved by trial and error thinking about the maths behind it can make it much easier. 

The goal is to choose a number that all 4 sides of the frame can add up to and arrange the cards to do this.  Some numbers are possible some numbers are not.  This puzzle has been selected as it allows students of all abilities to have a go as the maths involved is not difficult.  The challenge should be to find a method of determining what numbers can be used as the common total amount and then how to make finding the layout much easier.  The resource provided here allows the puzzle to be demonstrated easily and can also allow whole class discussion of how to approach the problem.  Clicking on one card and then another causes them to swap places.  The resource totals the different lines automatically.  The original wording of the puzzle can be made to appear by clicking on the question mark button.

A printable sheet accompanies this resource which includes the original wording and diagram. It also includes the appropriate cards for cutting out to do the puzzle away from a computer.  If teachers would like the solution and maths behind it leave a comment with your email address in the box (it will not be published).  There will be at least a 5 day delay to ensure that students who have been set this as homework aren’t cheating by impersonating a teacher!

Go to interactive whiteboard resource.

Get printable resource.

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