Measurement: Problem Solving (1)

In this activity, we will look at some wordy problems and use maths to work out the answers.

It helps to break the question down into simple steps and answer one part at a time.

Example

There are 3 girls on a school bus.  Five more girls get on along with some boys.

There are now 18 children on the bus.

How many boys are on the bus?

Answer

This is a subtraction or take away problem.

There are 18 children on the bus and we need to subtract the 3 girls from the beginning:  18 - 3  = 15 

We also need to subtract the extra 5 girls that got on:  15 - 5 = 10

This leaves us with 10 boys on the bus.