In addition to my position of Principal, I have the pleasure of teaching.  One of the subjects that I teach is Grade 6 Math.  The Grade 6 math curriculum is challenging for students. With respect to operations, students develop their skills on the basic operations of addition, subtraction, multiplication, and division.  Students are not introduced to concepts like exponents or square root.  I think it is important to challenge students, to go beyond the curriculum.  Therefore, I gave my Grade 6 students the following problem:

I gave this problem near the end of the day.  To my surprise, the next morning some of my students were running up to me to say they had solved it!  They solved it, despite not being taught have to use square root or factorials.  I do know students have a wealth of resources at their finger tips, but I was amazed at their excitement in solving a difficult problem.  It reminded me of the importance of challenging students.

Greg Kostiuk

PS – I will post the answer next week.