The Princess's Escape Room - A Maths Investigation or Discussion Framework: Year 6+

This mathematics investigation was designed for use by children of Year 6 - under the guidance and encouragement of a suitable mentor. It was not intended to be a ‘fire and forget’ worksheet, but rather a framework for discussion and exploration.

The students are presented with a problem in which there are two mystery numbers to be found. Two clues are provided, namely the Sum of the two numbers and the Difference between them.

Initially, the numbers given are sufficiently small so that a ‘straightforward’ and accessible strategy can be used to determine the solution.

In the second part of the question, the sizes of the numbers are increased, which greatly increases the difficulty of the problem and suggests the need to discover alternative strategies. Some of these are provided in the teacher’s commentary.

Although the material is designed to be challenging but accessible to children working within the government’s expectation for children at the end of Key Stage 2, it is possible that teachers of children in KS3 may find the resources useful.