Draw a Diagram
What is a problem?
Why teach problem solving?
Strategies
Resources
Inset
Page Index
Prompt poster: PDF 
Printable versions: PDF Word 
Day at the Races
Five horses ran in a race against each other every week. Red horse always won when it was sunny. Green horse always won when it was windy. Blue horse and Black horse won on all the other alternate days. In one month there had been five rainy days at the beginning of the month followed by 26 days where four had been windy. Blue horse had won six races. On how many days did red horse win?
When children meet this type of problem they are reluctant to use their ability to draw a diagram to help them to make sense of the problem. Problems of this type will encourage the children to see the relevance and usefulness of using a diagram.
| Questions to ask | Purpose |
|---|---|
| What do we know about this problem? | To extract the facts from the problem. |
| What do we need to find out? | Defining the problem. |
| How do the facts relate to each other how can you record this? | Leading into the strategy of drawing a diagram to illustrate the relationships between the facts. |