Friday, April 27, 2007
maths for the rusty minds
charissa gave me this question she had to solve for her primary 3 tutee. here it goes: kenny has some apples. if he puts them into boxes of 3, he will have 5 more boxes than if he puts them into boxes of 4. how many apples does he have? P.S. you cannot use algebra (:
then i saw her ALGEBRA, and condemned her! hah, it was in a mess and she defined X as the number of boxes of 3? oh well, you get to the answer still, but, it's so unprofessional.
then i saw her MODEL, and with my INTELLIGENT inclusions, she managed to make her tutee understand. poor students of today, the problems just get harder, maybe my kids might know algebra in primary 1 next time. who reckon not?
basically,
-every box of 3 has 1 less apple than every box of 4
-the extra 5 boxes of 3(15 apples) are actually made up of the difference between the two.
-total boxes of 4 = 15
-check: total boxes of 3 = 15 + 5
TA DAA* am i not a genius? (:
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