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Handshaking maths!

Class 6 used excellent problem solving skills to solve a very polite maths problem today!

The children worked in groups. This is the initial problem that was set for them:

We have 30 children in this class. If everyone shook hands with everyone else, how many handshakes would there be in total?

We started by using real children to test for one, two, three and four people shaking hands. The children then used drawings to work out five – ten people shaking hands.

It was very complicated and we had to work carefully so that we didn’t count too many handshakes or repeat them!

Eventually some of the children spotted a pattern or rule in their results and worked out how many handshakes there would be between our class of 30 children! If you would like to know the answer, please come to Class 6 to find out!

Miss Land.

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  1. Manon Hollingworth

    The answer to 30 children shaking hands is 436 shakes.

    • class6

      You worked so hard on this and it was very complicated adding it all up wasn’t it? Well done 🙂

  2. Sophie

    I nearly got the answer but I was one off!!

  3. Freya

    I got up to 17 people shaking hands.

  4. Lucas+Henry

    I found it really hard and complicated.

    I enjoyed handshaking because it’s polite.

  5. Rosa

    I think,it was hard but easy!

  6. Isobel

    I really enjoyed it even though it was tricky finding out the pattern.

  7. Livy and Elle

    In our groups Elle ‘s group got up to 30 handshakes, Livy’s group got up to 14 handshakes!

  8. Reuben and Elliet

    It was very fun!

    It was very complicated and tricky

  9. Shannon

    I enjoyed working in a group it was very hard and very fun.

  10. Ellie

    I enjoyed the handshaking maths.

  11. Morgan

    I iked doing the hand shakes but it wose not esy to do aspeshaly doing it with the hole class.