Picture book
Numeracy Lesson 4
Questions, assumptions and calculations
Introduction
In Lesson 2, we discussed the author's process of solving big questions.
In this lesson, you need to answer YOUR big question. It is important to take the time to get your calculations right.
Watch the video for an introduction to Lesson 4.
Understanding the tasks
Rating the tasks
This lesson contains a few activities. Each activity will have one or more tasks. These tasks have been given a rating.
Some of the tasks in this lesson are must do. These are important to help you understand the introductory ideas or skills.
Have a go at the should do tasks and reach out to your friends or teacher if you need some advice. These will usually take a bit longer to complete than must do tasks.
Could do tasks will probably take you some extra time and might need you to get creative or problem solve. We strongly encourage you to try these.
Important note
The purpose of this lesson is to breakdown your big question and find an answer.
As you move through the Activities and Tasks you will need to add information to the Calculating your big question Google Slides file so that you have everything you need to work on the layout of your double page spread in the Applied Lesson 4.
Start this lesson by:
Creating a copy of the file.
Copying the big question you wrote in Applied Lesson 3 Activity 1 into the first box.
Click on the image to open a new tab and view the Google Slides.
Click on the Use Template button to create a copy for you to edit.
Activity 1 - Big question dissection
Since our goal for this lesson is to answer your big question let's review the process we identified in Numeracy Lesson 2.
Ask a big question (you already did this part in Applied Lesson 3).
Do some research to find some information.
Choose a fact and/or an assumption related to each object in your question.
Use the facts and/or assumptions to complete a calculation.
Get an answer.
Task 1
Task 2
Task 3
Activity 2 - Big question answered
Task 1 - Facts and assumptions
Task 2 - Researching your own assumptions or facts
By now you should know what kind of information you need about the objects in your big question.
For example, you might need to know:
how long they both are
what volume they take up
how much they weigh
how much area they cover.
Take some time now to research the information you need.
Add the facts or assumptions you will use for each object into the Calculating your big question Google Slides.
How do I know if I need to make an assumption?
If the measurement you need for the object is not precise then you will need to make an assumption. For example, in the goldfish picture book, because there are different types of goldfish, the authors chose to assume an average size for their calculation.
Note: The unit of measurement has to be the same for the information about both objects.
Task 3 - Converting units
Click on the first image to open the Metric Units matching activity on the Transum website, in a new tab.
Drag the top tiles down to match them with the units in the bottom set.
Click on the second image to open the Converting Standard Units activity on the Transum website, in a new tab.
Use information from the metric units matching game to help you complete the conversions.
Finding this too easy? Try to work your way through to Level 6, Digital.
Task 4 - Completing a calculation and finding your answer
Activity 3 - Fun facts
Task 1
Each double-page spread of the picture book "How many mice make an elephant?" has extra information about the objects in the question.
For example; the big question 'How many high jumps to the moon?' has two interesting facts about jumping and four interesting facts about the moon. Can you spot them all?
Task 2
Spend some time researching some interesting facts for your big question.
Aim for at least two facts for each object.
When you have found your facts record them on the second slide of the Calculating your big question Google Slides file.
Task 3 - Digging deeper
This activity takes you deeper into fun facts and all the mathematics in the world around us.
Click on the image to open Google Earth in a new tab.
Use the activity to take a virtual tour of the world, looking specifically at these five triangular structures.
What big questions can you come up with that relate to these buildings?
Use the following process, to write and answer a big question about each one of the structures in the Google Earth tour.
Ask a big question.
Get some information from the Google Earth tour.
Choose a fact and/or assumption related to each object in your question.
Use the facts or assumptions to complete a calculation.
Get an answer.
Handing in your work
Don't forget to hand in the work you completed today!
Your teacher will have told you to do one of the following:
Upload any digital documents you created and any photos you took of your written work to your Learning Management system (MS Teams, Google Classroom for example).
Email any digital documents you created and any photos you took of your written work to your teacher.
Make sure you keep any handwritten work you did in your exercise book or folder as your teacher may need to see these when you are back in class.