Capabilities Project.
MT6.0 – How many toy cars
Name
Date
Class
Year 6 students are travelling to the swimming sports by bus.
There are 100 students in Year 6.
Part A:
How many buses are needed if each bus can carry at most 21 passengers? (Show your work.)
Part B.
If each class has 25 students and 1 teacher, are more buses needed? (Explain)
A shop sells packets of toy cars. There are 7 cars in a packet.
Each packet costs $6.
Part C:
What is the largest number of cars that can be bought for $50? (Show your work.)
Capabilities Project.
MT6.0 –How many toy cars Assessment Criteria:
Source:
Discussion:
Naplan 2013 Y5 NC Q30.
(Queensland Studies Authority. www.qsa.qld.edu.au)
Using multiplicative thinking for a word problem. Students need opportunities to interpret and solve a range of
word problems. To do this, they need an understanding of operations and the ability to choose and use the
operation required to solve a problem. Students need scaffolding and explicit teaching for a range of strategies
for solving problems (e.g. using concrete materials, pictures diagrams and number sentences). They need to be
able to identify a multiplicative situation within a problem and decided on a strategy to solve it.
Curriculum References:
Statements of Learning.
Y5
Students have the opportunity to read and interpret practical problems, identify appropriate operations to use,
express them mathematically and solve them (e.g. recognise that a problem involves repeated subtraction, link
it to division and use a suitable method to solve it).
Y7
They calculate with the four operations, powers of 10 and small whole number powers of other numbers, by
mental, written and technology-assisted methods.
Australian Curriculum.
L6
Select and apply efficient mental and written strategies and appropriate digital technologies to solve problems
involving all four operations with whole numbers (ACMNA123)
 applying a range of strategies to solve realistic problems and commenting on the efficiency of different
strategies
AusVels.
•
L6
solve problems that involve all four operations with whole numbers
• applying strategies already developed for solving problems involving small numbers to those
involving large numbers.
Proficiencies.
L6
 solve problems involving all four operations with whole numbers
Relationship to Multiplicative Thinking. (Source: Dianne Siemon. http://www.rmit.edu.au/staff/diannesiemon)
Select and apply efficient mental and written strategies and appropriate digital technologies to solve problems
involving all four operations with whole numbers (ACMNA123)
 First mention of these properties yet used in mental computation much earlier and 2 digit by 2 digit
multiplication in Year 6. Supportive of multiplicative thinking where factors used.
Use equivalent number sentences involving multiplication and division to find unknown quantities
(ACMNA121)
Capabilities Project.

Potentially supportive of multiplicative thinking where numbers renamed to support more efficient
calculation. Risk: this becomes rote procedure.