To see all of the work I do for TES Maths, including Resource of the Week, Inspect the Spec, Maths Newsletters and Topic Collections, please visit the TES Maths Blog here

What is it?
I’ll be honest – as soon as I saw the title, I knew I was going to pick this as my Resource of the Week. Fortunately, it just so happens to be an excellent activity. The Crab Race presents an engaging situation for students to challenge their knowledge of real life graphs, straight line graph, speed, distance, time, substitution, problem solving and much more besides. In essence it is nothing more than a one-sided worksheet, but the discussion it provokes makes it as worthy as a 30 slide lesson PowerPoint.

How can it be used?
I often find that activities such as this lend themselves particularly well to my Counter technique. This is where I get the students working in small groups and allocate each group one or two counters. These counters can then be exchanged for a hint at any stage of the lesson. However – and my students know I will stick to this – once the counters have been spent, then no help whatsoever from me. I find this simple idea gets students talking to each other more, and becoming much more selective over their choice of questions. And as an extra twist, I would allow them to exchange a counter for a 30 second go on Desmos, so they can test out their ideas for the equations of the lines.

Thanks so much for sharing
Craig Barton

Download The Crab Race
Student handout
Solutions

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