Figure Me Out

Skills: operation, fraction, percentage, communication

Resources: Paper, pencil, colours

Activity: As an introduction to the activity, get students to think about the numbers in their lives. Where/when is it necessary to use numbers to describe yourself? Students will then create a poster containing equations that others will have to solve.

  1. Students should create their equations on a separate sheet of paper before they include them in the poster
  2. Include addition and subtraction equations
  3. Include multiplication and division equations
  4. Include fraction questions
  5. Secondary school children can use a combination of operations such as brackets, indices, roots, division, multiplication, addition and subtract. (BIRDMAS)

Some examples of numbers to include:

  • Your age
  • Your shoe size
  • My house number
  • My birth year
  • My birth month
  • How many siblings you have
  • Number of pets in your house
  • Number of letters in your name
  • The number of sports games you have been to
  • How many instruments you own
  • How many counties you have visited
  • How many countries you have visited?
  • Your height
  • Your favourite number

Extension to the activity

  1. Include a bar chart showing “what I spend my time on each day”
  2. This activity could be used as a cross-curricular activity if the questions are asked in another language such as Irish, French or German.