Rich Learning Tasks

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Ten Balloons
Questions to facilitate the learning
• Could there be 4 red balloons? Why or why not?
• What is the least number of red balloons there could be?
• How many green balloons are possible — could it be 5? 4?
• How can you check to see whether your numbers for each balloon are right?
Scaffolding the learning
• Will you choose the number of red first or green first? Why?
• What is a good number of red balloons to try? Why?
• What is a good number of green balloons to try? Why?
What’s the point of this task?
By engaging in this task, students have an opportunity to compare small numbers to determine which is
greater and which is less. Using the terms most and least in the task familiarises students with important
comparison terminology, but also allows for decision making (Can there be two leasts? or two mosts?
Does most mean more than half of the balloons or does most mean the greatest of the three numbers?)
and allows for multiple answers. Although the focus is on comparison, students are informally exploring
different ways to decompose the number 10.
Extending the learning
Students might change the number of balloons to 12 or might change the rules. Most of the balloons have
to be red, but the number of green and blue ones is the same.
Number