November 2009, Stage 2&3

This month many of our problems focus on properties of number and calculating. 'Playing' with the mathematics of a situation is often a good way to get into a problem and several resources this month lend themselves to that approach.

Problems

28 and It's Upward and Onward

Stage: 2 Challenge Level:

Can you find ways of joining cubes together so that 28 faces are visible?

Tables Without Tens

Stage: 2 Challenge Level:

Investigate and explain the patterns that you see from recording just the units digits of numbers in the times tables.

Which Symbol?

Stage: 2 Challenge Level:

Choose a symbol to put into the number sentence.

Neighbours

Stage: 2 Challenge Level:

In a square in which the houses are evenly spaced, numbers 3 and 10 are opposite each other. What is the smallest and what is the largest possible number of houses in the square?

Sets of Four Numbers

Stage: 2 Challenge Level:

There are ten children in Becky's group. Can you find a set of numbers for each of them? Are there any other sets?

Going Round in Circles

Stage: 3 Challenge Level:

Mathematicians are always looking for efficient methods for solving problems. How efficient can you be?

Shifting Times Tables

Stage: 3 Challenge Level:

Can you find a way to identify times tables after they have been shifted up?

Christmas Chocolates

Stage: 3 Challenge Level:

How could Penny, Tom and Matthew work out how many chocolates there are in different sized boxes?

Featured Solution

Odd Squares

Read the different justifications of the result of this problem.

Go to last month's problems to see more solutions.

Articles & Games

Assessing Pupil Progress (APP) and NRICH Resources

In this article Jenny talks about Assessing Pupils' Progress and the use of NRICH problems.