Find the Route - Arithmetic with Fractions
Number Fractions GCSE IGCSE KS3 12+Puzzle Challenge Practise

Description/Aim





This activity is designed as a context for the practise of arithmetic with fractions. In the first instance students are asked to choose a route through a maze of instructions for adding or multiplying different fractions that results in a given total. The challenges progress and there after students are challenged to use their imaginations to create different sums that could have created given answers! There is a worksheet attached.
Teachers Notes - Why? How? What?

Why we like this activity ….

This is summed up by 'engaging context'. There is an element of freedom given to students from the outset! They may not be doing the same thing as their neighbour and by the end they should definitely not be. This ownership coupled for the challenge of finding the correct route or the most outlandish looking sum has proven a great motivator. The exercise demands in its nature a good deal of practise without ever appearing as a list of questions to be completed.

How this activity be used ….

This is probably limited to a single lesson and we have used it as both a diagnostic tool and as a follow up to discussions about operating with fractions. Depending on your group, students can be asked to look for strategies that help them eliminate routes, such as just working with denominators. It can follow directly from 'Operating Fractions'. It could be important to pair your students to build in a natural checking procedure.

What to expect when using this activity – from our experience

Errors! Arithmetic with fractions is, from our experience, notoriously trickier than it looks and students will make errors. it is in the discussion of these errors either with partners or the competition that some of the students' frailties are exposed and addressed.

Extra Notes