Dear Parents and Friends,

Each week we are going to have some fun problem solving questions for the students in the newsletter. We are hoping to increase the students understanding and knowledge when working with word problems/open ended questions. Feel free to support your child with the questions. Please email me your child’s answers or your child can hand me their work at school.

Kind Regards

Brendon Pye

Lower:

Mrs Swan has a frog called Freddo. Last week Freddo got stuck in a well. Freddo wants to get out from the bottom of the well. Each day, he climbs 3m up the wall of the well and then rests. But the wall is slippery and he then slips down 1m. The next day he does the same thing. In fact he does this every day until he gets out of the well. The well is 13m deep. How long does it take Freddo to climb out of the well?

Upper:

Gill is playing with her name and with numbers. If A = 1, B = 2, C = 4, D = 8, E = 16, F = 32, G = 64 and so on.

The value of Gill’s name is 64 + 256 + 2048 + 2048 = 4416. What is the value of your name?

Answers from last week:

Lower:

Miss Welfare owns 10 cars and a very large garage. If she can see 3 cars parked outside her garage, how many cars are inside? How many different ways can she park her cars inside and outside her garage?

Answer: 7 cars inside her garage. Other ways she can park her cars: 11 possible solutions (0,10) (1,9) (2,8) (3,7) (4,6) (5,5) (10,0) (9,1) (8,2) (7,3) 6,4)

Middle:

Rosie and Tess have agreed to work for 8 days to help their parents over the holidays. The pay they get will vary.  Rosie will get $10 for the first day she works and an extra $1 every day she works after that (eg. Day 1=$10, day 2=$11, Day 3=$12 etc). Tess will get $1 for the first day she works, but for each day she works from then on, her pay will be doubled. Who would you rather be and why?

Answer:

Rosie- day 1-$10 day 2-$11 day 3-$12 day 4-$13 day 5-$14 day 6-$15 day 7-$16 day 8-$17- total $108

Tess- day 1-$1 day 2-$2 day 3-$4 day 4-$8 day 5-$16 day 6-$32 day 7-$64 day 8-$128- total $128

Upper:

Mrs Brearley has ten tiles with one of the numbers 0, 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, and 9 on each of them. She plays around and discovers that she can make some addition sums like the one below.

What’s more, the four numbers on the tiles in the answer to the sum (the numbers in the bottom row), add up to 9.

Answers: