A drinking straw manufacturer is trying to fill an order for 10 000 drinking straws. He is a bit confused though. He has packed one box holding 24 packets, each with 150 straws in. He has 10 packets of 150 ready to be packed. He has 3500 loose straws waiting to go into packets. He doesn't know if he has enough straws to fill his order - please help him out.

As the students worked and then reflected on the problem it was evident that they needed more experiences with similar problems. Stefan chose frozen juice cups (hugely popular at the school tuckshop) as his context for a follow up problematised situation that would allow his students to reflect on and try out strategies presented in the earlier problem. Changing the numbers was deliberate to encourage use of the rule for multiplying by ten and possibly doubling and halving, aspects that Stephan noticed needed to be further developed.

Here is Stefan's innovated problem:

Our school tuck shop ordered 5000 frozen juice cups from Cottee's Cordial Company for Term 4.
Every box of cordial holds 160 juice cups.
In the first delivery from Cottees there were 10 boxes of cordial.
In the second delivery there were 12 boxes.
In the final delivery there were 5 boxes and 200 looses Juice cups.
Was the order properly filled?

Stefan ran this problem in his room within days of running the first one and was pleased to see his student's progress in terms of trying more efficient strategies than they had in the first problem. He also noticed less hesitancy in tackling the multi-steps and having a go rather than worrying about the answer.

Thankyou Stefan for allowing us to use your problematised situation.