Guess and Check – My favorite strategy!
Guess and check is exactly what it sounds like. You guess a number, plug it into the problem and see if it works. If not, guess again. This is a strategy I used a lot in school as it was good practice. Having students check an answer is a skill that needs to be started early and here at MANGO Math our Deluxe Math Crates have lessons that allow students to use the strategy of guess and check to start this life long skill.
is a great activity where students use fruit counters with clues to solve what fruits and how many go into the fruit salad. Example:
What fruits and how many of each are in your salad?
You can also check it out on our MANGO Math YouTube Channel and order the Deluxe Math Crate from our website.
Students will use place value understanding to create a multiplication problem that will get them closest to a target number. Challenge is that students can only use each digit once. Given the digits 0, 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9 students see who can create a multiplication equation that gets them closest to the target number.
If the target number is 300, students need to come up with two numbers that when multiplied together are closest to 300. Remember they can only use each digit once. Students can cross off the digit as they use it. If need be students can check with a calculator.
Example: Target number is 300.
Students can try various attempt to guess to try and get the target number.
24 x 13 = 312
32 x 10 = 320
20 x 15 = 300
Check out our website for more on our 5th grade Deluxe Math Crate.
Using a golf course students will understand that positive and negative numbers are used together to describe quantities having opposite directions.
Students start by writing down how far they hit their different clubs; wood, iron and putter. This is a permanent number that doesn't change throughout the game.
Next yardage for each hole is determined and written down by each hole.
Students then decide how many times they must hit with their wood, iron and putter to get the ball into the hole.
Example:
I hit my wood 200 yards, my iron 35 yards and my putter 5 yards. The yardage to hole 1 is 325 yards.
So I use my wood once, my iron 3 times and my 4 times.
More lessons like this can be found in our Sports and Math Deluxe Math Crate.
These are all great games that have students guessing and checking to try and come up with the closest answer. Make sure to check out the other games we have for each grade level in our website, www.mangomath.com.
