Friday

Finding different ways to sort groups into parts

In this Challenge, all the items in the picture are identical so that children need to choose how to split them without the support of having obvious groups. Without any physical differences, children now attempt to sort the biscuits by amount, using their knowledge of number bonds to 5. Encourage children to discover for themselves that there is more than one way to sort the whole into parts, for example, 1 and 4, 2 and 3, etc.

Questions: 

• What is the whole? What is the same? Can you see any differences? How else could you break the whole into parts?
• Is there more than one way to do this? How will you find out? What could you use to help you?
• How do you know that there is more than one way? Work with a partner to find all the ways.