Traffic Jam
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- Aug 13 2010 5:01 PM
Robert Preston
This resource was matched by a member of the Brokers of Expertise standards matching team.
Contributed By
- Original Source:Illuminations
Conditions of Use:None Specified
Description
This activity, reviewed for grades 3-5 by Illuminations, presents the problem, "there are seven stepping stones and six people." The three people standing on the three left-most stones must exchange places with the people on the three right-most stones. Students work in groups, and then demonstrate their solutions using a variety of ways to model the problem (including actual people, manipulatives, and an applet that requires a Java-enabled browser). From this discussion, the students can begin to formulate rules for how to do the task most efficiently. The latter parts of the lesson may prove too advanced for elementary students; it was primarily designed for the middle school. But elementary students can certainly explore the problem, and its focus on multiple ways of representing the problem may be useful for these students. Less
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Topics and Grades
Grade: 3 to 5
Topics: Algebra & Functions, Mathematics