Learning Made Fun: Education Ideas and Resources

Halloween 'What is The Question?'

10/11/2017

This is a fun and simple way to get some spooky math thinking in during this Halloween. As in the image below, students will be creating their own Halloween word problems to match the answer given.

This is easy to set up. All I did for the above was:

Type up one page with 'The Answer is' and made the font as large as possible.
On the second page, I decided on a number suitable for my students to work with. In the example above, 14. I also added something of a Halloween nature to make it thematic for the season. e.g. pumpkins
Being for the younger ones, I also chose to show the 14 pumpkins visually. For older students (especially if using larger numbers), the picture part could be skipped.
At the bottom, glue (or staple) the sides of a manila folder to form a pouch. On the front of the folder, write (or print) 'The question could be?'

The pouch is the spot for students to put their completed word problems in. At the end, pull them out to read to the rest of the class.

Keep the top and bottom and just change the middle to a new number and Halloween theme item to keep refreshing the activity.
Here's some more examples below:

This sort of activity works well as part of a daily math morning routine or warm-up, The more students do it, the better word problems you will start to find. I love how creative the kids can get with this, and the best part is that they are thinking mathematically at the same time too!

If it is the first time you are introducing this activity to your class, modeling and guiding a few word problems first would be best. I like to think aloud by asking myself these questions:

What is the item that must be featured in my word problem? Pumpkins
What math operation will I use in my word problem? Subtraction
What other characters could I add to my word problem? (Maybe one good character and one bad character) Granny, Wicked Witch.
Where is my word problem going to be set? Granny’s Garden
Any other details? Wicked witch steals pumpkins from Granny’s Garden.
Practice equations to make sure it equals the answer. (20 - 6 = 14)

EXAMPLE: There were 20 pumpkins in Granny’s Garden. On the night of Halloween, a wicked witch landed in her garden and stole 6 of Granny’s pumpkins! How many pumpkins did Granny find left in her garden?

I’ll share another way of doing this sort of activity in my next post and include a cool Halloween freebie for you too! Stay tuned!