Twos to Nines Challenges

Looking for a fun, math-y first day of school activity? These Order of Operations Challenges are one of my favorite ways to engage students on the first day of class!

Activity Source

This summer, my husband and I ran across a treasure trove of puzzle books at Goodwill. We *had* to buy them. As Shaun was driving us home, I flipped through the books and would occasionally pose puzzles for us to solve together in the car. We had a lot of fun with this, and in the process I found some puzzles that would be PERFECT for use in the classroom.

Twos to Nines Challenge Instructions

The task is to use exactly four twos (or threes, fours, etc) to make each target number. Add arithmetical symbols between the numbers to make every equation true. You may use plus, minus, times, and divide symbols, as well as parentheses and brackets for grouping.

Turning this Into a First Day of School Activity

Originally, I thought about turning this into a puzzle for my puzzle table, but I never got around to it. Fast forward to this past week. I needed an activity to do on day one, and I decided I wanted to do something a bit different than what I’ve done in the past.

For reference on past activities, check out my post on 40+ Ideas for the First Week of School!

My students are arranged in six groups of five, so I decided to set up six challenges around the room. The book featured challenges using the numbers between 2 and 9, so this meant that I had not used the challenges based on the numbers 8 and 9.

Introducing Students to the Challenge

To introduce the task, I threw the Eights Challenge up on the TV.  (It’s going to take me a while to get used to saying TV and not SMARTBoard!)

After a quick overview of the rules, I gave them a few target numbers to work towards.

Students quickly got to work. Some grabbed paper and a writing utensil. Others got out their graphing calculator or phone calculator. Still others just sat and thought about the task.

Within a couple of minutes, a student in each period would announce that they had found the answer to 10. I asked them to read me their solution so I could write it on the board.

Almost every single time, I ended up hearing 8 + 8 / 8 + 8 = 10. So, I would tell them that we needed to check their work. This was when I asked them what the order of operations says that we need to do first. Unanimously, the class would say divide. Then, a bit of panic would set in. 8/8 is 1. So, 8 + 1 + 8 is 17, not 10.

Without me saying a word, the class would start to suggest either a different way to solve the problem OR a way to salvage this attempt. It usually wasn’t long before someone would suggest that we could use PARENTHESES! So, from this, I learned that we do know our order of operations. We’re just a bit rusty, but I can deal with that.

Around the Room Puzzle Stations

Around the room, I had marked off six four-foot sections of white board space so that each group of students could have their own space for working problems throughout the year.

Each table group chose a different number based challenge to work on. They instantly got to work, and the room was soon abuzz with awesome conversations. Students were excited and joyful as they found various solutions.

Students were checking other students’ ideas and pointing out any issues. Lots of parentheses were being used. Were all their answers perfect? Nope. But, it’s day one, and it gave me a great snapshot of where my students are starting from.

It was the first day of school and every kid was engaged. In fact, I would say this was the most engaged my students have ever been on the first day of school. This was my favorite first day of teaching EVER.

Check out this awesome group work!

Switching Things Up

Each group was given one dry erase marker and one graphing calculator to encourage collaboration. Every few minutes, I would announce “SWITCH!” This meant that the person holding the marker needed to pass it to another person in the group. The calculator person did the same thing.

Every once in a while, I would introduce a new twist. About five minutes into the activity, I had the groups pause and look at me. I instructed them to nominate one volunteer from each group. This person was to hold their hand up so I could ensure that I had one volunteer from EVERY group. They asked what they were volunteering for. I just said “You’ll find out soon.”

Once one hand was up from every group, I informed the class that these students would be rotating one group clock-wise. So, each group would lose one member and gain a different member. There were a few groans with this announcement, but students complied.

I was excited to try this strategy since each group was working on the same type of challenge, but no two groups had the same problems to solve. This meant that the new group member could bring STRATEGIES from their previous group, but they could not just bring ANSWERS.

After a few times of rotating a single group member, I changed things up yet again with having the entire group rotate to the next station. I did run into a few issues that I hadn’t figured out how to handle beforehand.

What to Do When Groups Start Finishing

The groups assigned to the challenges based on lower numbers (2s, 3s, and 4s especially) were sometimes able to completely finish their challenge. When this happened, I did one of two things.

In my smaller classes, there was often a challenge that had not yet been started. In these classes, I sent the finished group to this untackled challenge. In my larger classes, I had the finished group split apart and join other groups.

The Sevens Challenge ended up being the most difficult for my students to tackle. Often, there would only be two or three target numbers solved by the end of the class period.

Individual Number Challenges

Don’t have time for this activity and want to experience part of the magic on a much smaller scale? I have created separate printables for each individual number challenge.

After so many teachers had success using the Twos to Nines Challenge with their students during the first week of school, I decided to turn it into a collection of free printable order of operations puzzles that can be used throughout the entire school year.

Twos Challenge

Threes Challenge

Fours Challenge

Fives Challenge

Sixes Challenge

Sevens Challenge

Eights Challenge

Nines Challenge

Digital Adaptations of the Twos to Nines Challenge

Google Slides

The Twos to Nines Challenge has been turned into a Google Slides activity by Meghan Smeenk. Check it out here.

KellyLove shares a slightly different Google Slides version.  

Desmos Activity Builder

Scott McEwen has created Desmos versions of this activity as well. Each challenge is a separate Activity Builder.