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Being Resilient - Primary is part of our Developing Mathematical Habits of Mind Primary collection.
In Developing Students' Resilience, we offer you support and advice on how to encourage your learners to become resilient mathematicians.
We know that good thinkers are resilient, they don't give up easily, and are motivated to work hard and keep going when faced with challenges. Here are some problems that may require similar determination from your learners. You could warn your learners that the solutions may not be immediately obvious, and they may need to persevere. We hope that they will have the opportunity to appreciate that
success can be sweeter after a struggle.
Additionally you may find that these tasks support the development of other problem-solving skills and mathematical habits of mind, which you could choose to highlight as and when they arise.
You can browse through the Number, Measures, Geometry or Statistics collections, or scroll down to see the full set of problems below.
Number problems at primary level that may require resilience.
Measure problems at primary level that may require resilience.
Geometry problems at primary level that may require resilience.
Statistics problems at primary level that may require resilience.
Use these head, body and leg pieces to make Robot Monsters which are different heights.
How many different triangles can you draw on the dotty grid which each have one dot in the middle?
Start with three pairs of socks. Now mix them up so that no mismatched pair is the same as another mismatched pair. Is there more than one way to do it?
Place the numbers 1 to 6 in the circles so that each number is the difference between the two numbers just below it.
My dice has inky marks on each face. Can you find the route it has taken? What does each face look like?
Cut four triangles from a square as shown in the picture. How many different shapes can you make by fitting the four triangles back together?
Resources to accompany the Being Resilience collections.
There are six numbers written in five different scripts. Can you sort out which is which?
In this game for two players, you throw two dice and find the product. How many shapes can you draw on the grid which have that area or perimeter?
On a digital 24 hour clock, at certain times, all the digits are consecutive. How many times like this are there between midnight and 7 a.m.?
How many different triangles can you make on a circular pegboard that has nine pegs?
Four bags contain a large number of 1s, 3s, 5s and 7s. Can you pick any ten numbers from the bags so that their total is 37?
Choose four different digits from 1-9 and put one in each box so that the resulting four two-digit numbers add to a total of 100.
Can you go through this maze so that the numbers you pass add to exactly 100?
Some of the numbers have fallen off Becky's number line. Can you figure out what they were?
Arrange the four number cards on the grid, according to the rules, to make a diagonal, vertical or horizontal line.
A game for two people, or play online. Given a target number, say 23, and a range of numbers to choose from, say 1-4, players take it in turns to add to the running total to hit their target.
A game in which players take it in turns to choose a number. Can you block your opponent?