Curriculum

PRACTICE SKIP – COUNTING AT HOME USING CHALLENGING TASKS

Reference: Russo, J. (2019). Teaching with Challenging Tasks: Experiments with Counting Patterns. Primary Mathematics, 23(1), 11-16.

CHALLENGING TASK 1: Third Time Lucky

• Starting at 0, I skip counted to by 2’s to 100, placing a red dot on all the numbers I landed on.
• Next, I skip counted by 5’s to 100, placing a green dot on all the numbers I landed on.
• Finally, I skip counted by 10’s to 100, placing a yellow dot on all the numbers I landed on.

What are the numbers with three dots on them – the numbers I landed on 3 times?

CHALLENGING TASK 2: Fourth Time Luckier

• Starting at 0, I skip counted to by 2’s to 50, placing a red dot on all the numbers I landed on.
• Next, I skip counted by 3’s to 50, placing a green dot on all the numbers I landed on.
• Then, I skip counted by 5’s to 50, placing a yellow dot on all the numbers I landed on.
• Finally, I skip counted by 10’s to 50, placing a blue dot on all the numbers I landed on.

There is only one number with four counters on it. What is that number?

CHALLENGING TASK 3: Two’s, threes, fours, and fives; which number will survive?

• Starting at 0, I skip counted to by 2’s to 40, crossing off the numbers as I went.
• Then I did the same thing, but instead, skip counted by 3’s.
• Next, I did it by 4’s.
• Finally, I skip counted again, but counted by 5’s

Some numbers were crossed off more than once, but some numbers survived – they weren’t crossed off at all. Can you guess which numbers survived.