Acrobats, Grandmas and Ivan February 23, 2008

Hello to all my friends in Kelowna and Kamloops!  I wanted to send along the text & pictures you’ll need to try the Acrobats, Grandmas and Ivan problem with your students.  It’s a classic Marilyn Burns activity that I tried this last week in a grade 4/5 classroom with really cool results… I can see it playing out in a variety of ways at different age levels, perhaps even by partnering it with a read-aloud of the book Equal Shmequal by Virginia Kroll, a story in which forest animals take part in a tug of war with crazy outcomes!The Acrobats, Grandmas and Ivan task, with all its logical and algebraic thinking, presents a fun and engaging way to work with notions of equality and to explore many different ways to solve a problem.  If you’re looking for a task to encourage the mathematical process of reasoning, this one’s it! Click here for a pdf of the problem (Acrobats) including the pictures you’ll need to represent the first, second and final rounds of the tug of war contest…Carole