Experience of the hundreds – the explosion of a task

Abstract

One of the important elements of the exploratory Hungarian primary maths teaching, which is associated with Tamás Varga and Zoltán Dienes, is that students solve the problem using activities, tools and at their own pace. This is the spirit in which the current content regulations for mathematics teaching and most of the textbooks for mathematics teaching have been developed. The focus of this paper is on a 3rd grade textbook mathematics task related to number extension, which can be solved not only in the textbook on paper, but also in an activity using careful teacher preparation and everyday tools. In this way, the textbook task becomes more vivid, less abstract, more understandable, more motivating and the process of solving it can raise new questions in the students. The task also includes possibilities for continuation, as the topic of number extension should be presented to the children not only in terms of the number of units, as in the selected task, but also in terms of the number of measures. Furthermore, the development of estimation skills and the use of approximate counting are also closely linked to the textbook task.