Did you know that the white spots on dominos are called pips? Figure out the number of pips in a box of dominos without using any dominos.
Two months ago we had given this class of fourth and fifth grade students several domino tasks from which they could choose which ones they wanted to solve. Well, here is another! It was helpful for students to have solved the other "Domino Dilemma" before completing this one (Miss Amico's crazy Italian grandparents have a set of dominos with the digits 0 - 9 on them. Dominos we commonly use have digits 0 - 6 on them and come 28 in a set. How many dominos come in a set with digits 0 - 9 on them?) This task assesses student's ability to find a pattern (in order to figure out all possible domino pip combinations) and then to create an organized method for determining the sum of the pips. Most students will create a list of all possible domino combinations, usually in some organized fashion and then will do some subtotaling and then find the grand total of their results. 60 minutes The studies of games and other forms of entertainment. Make sure students have lots of opportunities to work with dominos before giving this task. Also, we adapted the task for a student in the class who has special needs and who had an IEP goal of understanding "more than" and "less than". Which dominos have more than 8 pips? Which dominos have less than 8 pips?
- Dominos
- Calculators
- Graph paper
There are 168 pips.
Although this student finds the correct solution, his/her process of finding the total is awkward and rudimentary. His/her work lacks organization and is difficult to follow. S/he uses math language incorrectly and his/her representation lacks labels.
This student arrives at an incorrect answer, which if s/he had gone back and checked his/her work could have been remedied. S/he has an interesting way of finding all domino combinations, which could have been more clearly presented. The reader has to fill in many details to understand what was done. This student's work has good potential and s/he should be encouraged to go back and make revisions to better communicate his/her solution.
This student uses a systematic approach to solving the task by finding a pattern and creates a representation to express his/her solution. This student could be encouraged to look more closely at his/her results to see if s/he can notice any patterns, relationships or generalizations and probably could do so given the organization s/he used in his/her approach. His/her representation could be labeled and his/her communication more clear.
This student solves the task in a similar way to his/her peers, but creates a novel way of finding the total. S/he then solves the problem again, using the same strategy, for dominos having 0 - 9 pips. It would have been neat if the student had been able to verify his/her solution to the task using his/her extension as a way of verifying his/her solution.
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