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What is it?
This resource by alutwyche is one of my favourites. It is a codebreaker activity focusing on worded equations. This is an area of maths I find many students struggle with. Give them an equation in its abstract form and they may be okay, but wrap the equation up in some context or scenario, and they are in trouble. Here students get to practice forming and solving equations, with the added incentive that if they can get it right they will unlock the solution to an impressively cheesy joke.

How can it be used?
Activities like this often replace the standard practice questions I would give my students. So, following an example-problem pair, I would hand out this sheet and see how my students get on. In the meantime walk around the classroom, looking for issues, listening into interesting conversations and not being afraid to stop the class is there was something I felt every students would benefit from hearing.

Following on from this activity, there is always the option to challenge students to create their own worded equation codebreaker. This is likely to be a challenging but incredibly worthwhile task, as students must work backwards to create and solve equations of their own which can subsequently be set to and checked by their peers.

Thank you for sharing!
Craig Barton

Download: Worded equations codebreaker
View the author’s other resources