Birthday treat
This is a level 4 number activity from the Figure It Out series. It is focused on solving problems involving addition, subtraction, multiplication, and division of money. A PDF of the student activity is included.
About this resource
Figure It Out is a series of 80 books published between 1999 and 2009 to support teaching and learning in New Zealand classrooms.
This resource provides the teachers' notes and answers for one activity from the Figure It Out series. A printable PDF of the student activity can be downloaded from the materials that come with this resource.
Specific learning outcomes:
- Sovle problems involving addition, subtraction, multiplication and division of money.
Birthday treat
Achievement objectives
NA4-1: Use a range of multiplicative strategies when operating on whole numbers.
Required materials
- Figure It Out, Link, Number Sense, Book One, "Birthday treat", page 21
See Materials that come with this resource to download:
- Birthday treat activity (.pdf)
Activity
This activity uses a context that should appeal to students in this age group and should thus encourage them to develop their number problem-solving strategies further.
If the students make an error in question 1, it will have a carry-over effect to the following questions. Have the students report their solutions for question 1 and resolve any difficulties before they continue with the next question. Take the opportunity to see if the students can find the multiplicative relationship between the $5.50 cost for the movie and the $55 total. This is a “10 times larger” relationship, and as there are 5 boys, the movies will take half of the $55, leaving half for food.
Another way of looking at this is to see that if there is $55 for 5 boys, each boy could have $11; that is, $5.50 for the movies and $5.50 for food.
After the students have answered question 4, you might like to encourage them to develop some new types of burgers to add to the Burger Planet menu, along with different prices. They could use these new burgers to work out different options for the 5 boys.
1.
$27.50
2.
$5.50
3.
a. Earth meal: $5.00; mega moon meal: $5.30; super saturn meal: $5.90
b. Super saturn meal, no upgrade
4.
Answers will vary. Two possible answers are:
- earth meal upgrade $5.00
- mega moon meal $4.80
- mega moon meal upgrade $5.30
- super saturn meal $5.40
- super saturn meal upgrade $5.90
- Total: $26.40
- Change: $1.10
or
- earth meal upgrade $5.00
- two earth burgers, large liquid fuel $5.00
- mega moon meal upgrade $5.30
- super saturn meal $5.40
- two super saturn burgers and
- one medium chip booster $6.80
- Total: $27.50
- Change: $0.00
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