What am I?

What am I?

Lead In:

To get us warmed up to our activity, we spent a few minutes seeing if we could solve the following 5 'what am I' questions:

° Half of me is 26 weeks.  What am I?

° If you multiply me by 60, I become a minute.  What am I?

° I have 3652 days.  What am I?

° I have 1440 minutes. What am I?

° If you divide me by 10, I become a decade.  What am I?


We then shared with our table partners, what we thought they were and then some of us shared strategies they used to try to work them out.  Some of us needed to relook at how the prefix 'dec' means 10 and how the prefix 'cent' means 100.  We wondered though why a millennium doesn't mean a million years since that feels like an obvious connection.  We posted that question on our wonder wall for someone to find out for us at some point.

Investigation:

We then had a choice of either individually or with a partner to create our own 'what am I? puzzle questions which we added to our google doc.   To take our thinking a bit further, we needed to place the 'what am I' question in two columns - 'easier' or 'more challenging'.

After we had generated a fair amount of questions, we then spent time trying to solve the questions we had created. The children could choose questions from a column they felt would challenge their thinking enough based on their ability and understanding.  We use this strategy a lot in our class as a way of differentiating to student needs.  It also serves as a useful informal assessment by observing the levels of questions the children select to solve.

Easier	Challenging	More Challenging
A quarter of me is 13 weeks. What am I? A : a year	There are 48 of me in 1 day. What am I? A : a half hour	I have 876 581 hours. What am I? A : a decade
If you double me, I become a fortnight. What am I? A : a week	There are 100 of me in 1 century, but I am not a year. What am I? A : The student who created this question thought of the answer- autumns. We found the answer could be other units too such as Januaries, Christmases, decades etc	There are 5 217 of me in 1 century. What am I? A : a week
I have 12 hours. What am I? A : a.m OR p.m	There are approximately 26 of me in 1 year. What am I? A : a fortnight	I have 1 800 seconds. What am I? A : half an hour
If you double me and then halve me, I become 52 weeks. What am I? A : a year	Three-quarters of me is approximately 276 days. What am I ? A : a year	There are 52 of me in 2015, but I am not a week. What am I? A : Monday
When I am made, the Earth has orbited the Sun 100 times. What am I? A : a year	If you halve me, I have 1 826 days. What am I? A : a decade	I usually only have an extra two days, but occasionally I have an extra 3 days depending on the years. What am I? A : a decade
	There are 86 400 of me in 1 day. What am I? A : a second	If you halve me, I will have 2 600 weeks. What am I? A : a century
		I have 365 242 days. What am I ? A : a millennium. The student who created this found an interesting connection and tried to find out whether the answer begins with 365 because there 365 days in a year….

We really enjoyed trying to solve the puzzles we had set for each other.  The activity also served as a useful assessment by observing the types of questions each student was attempting to create and the strategies they were using to solve them.