Those are the words every math teacher wants to hear. What a great two days we've had in math class. The students are exploring greatest common factors by attacking the Fruit Basket Challenge.
Students were instructed to assemble food baskets for donation. They had to determine how many baskets could be made using the given fruit, so that each basket contained the same number of each kind of fruit. The goal was to make as many identical baskets as possible, with no fruit leftover.
Each group of students chose to work through the problem differently, using different manipulatives. Some used linking cubes to represent the fruit and some used a white board and markers. It didn't matter what path different groups took, they all came to the same answers.
Students were instructed to assemble food baskets for donation. They had to determine how many baskets could be made using the given fruit, so that each basket contained the same number of each kind of fruit. The goal was to make as many identical baskets as possible, with no fruit leftover.
Each group of students chose to work through the problem differently, using different manipulatives. Some used linking cubes to represent the fruit and some used a white board and markers. It didn't matter what path different groups took, they all came to the same answers.
Tomorrow we are going to dig deeper into the problem and our meta-cognitive practices by answering the following questions: