Students in 1/2NC worked in small groups for this investigation.
Initially each group noticed something different which they shared with the whole class:
- the flowers were different colours (2 flowers have the same colour and they followed each other in a counting sequence)
- each flower had a 2-digit number (11-19)
- 9 flowers
- each of the numbers on the flowers had a 1 in the tens column (eg. 13 is 1 ten and 3 more)
After listening to what each group had noticed students started investigating which butterflies could go together to equal a total on a flower.
Groups discovered they needed a butterfly with 10 on it beside each flower (for the value of the 1 in the tens position) and a 1-digit butterfly that added to it to make the total of the flower (10+3=13).