Tag: Addition

Task of the Week: Town Hall

Author Simon BarlovitsDate
Task of the Week

Our current task of the week leads us to Switzerland. Noah Gass, student of primary education, created the MathCityMap task “Rathaus” (engl. “town hall”) in Liestal near Graz. He answered us some questions about the MathCityMap app.

How did you get in contact with the MathCityMap app?

I am a student for primary education at the Pädagogische Hochschule Nordwestschweiz in Basel. I take part in a didactics seminar about teaching mathematics using digital media for which I created a MathCityMap mathtrail.

Please describe your task. How could students solve the task.

To answer the task, students have to find out how many hours the town hall is opened per week. Except for two days, the opening hours differ from day to day. For example, on one day the town is closed during a lunch break, on others it is opened continuously. First, the students have to calculate the daily opening hours. Then, they can figure out how long the town hall is opened weekly by adding those daily opening hours.

Which didactic aims are stimulated through your task?

To answer the questions, the students have to calculate with full and half hours – they need decimal numbers. Another difficulty is that the time is given in a scale of 24 units. However, speaking about time differs from the “written” digital time – to calculate the opening hours from half past 7 a.m. to 2 p.m. the students have to find out the time period between 7:30 and 14:00 o’clock.

Task of the Week: Alte Münz

Author Simone JablonskiDate
Task of the Week

In the present Task of the Week, the Roman numerals are looked at more closely, a spelling for the natural numbers which arose in Roman antiquity. Particularly on old buildings, a marking of the year of construction in Roman numbers is usual. The task is located in Wetzlar’s inner city and can be found in the trail “Mathe in Wetzlar”. There the Roman numerals are incorporated into a slogan on a house facade.

Task: Alte Münz (task number: 545)

In the inscription on the house “Alte Münz” (Eisenmarkt 9) some letters are strikingly capitalized. Add the values ​​of the letters in the Roman numeric system.  

The students must recognize the larger Roman numbers and note how many times they occur. Subsequently, the various Roman numerals are translated into the Arabic notation and added. The Roman numerals as a spelling for the natural numbers are usually worked out in class 5 and can be used from this point onwards. Here, the rules for calculation with Roman numerals are less important than the translation of Roman and Arabic numbers.