Advent Calendar Day 24: Christmas Eve Countdown

Today's Skills that Count looks at multi-step questions.

With Christmas upon us, we hope you found our Advent Calendar insightful and helped you in better understanding a sample of the questions you are likely to see in Functional Skills maths Levels 1 and 2.

Christmas Eve involves planning, timing and quick maths.

Today’s Skills that Count combines skills from earlier days to build confidence in multi-step reasoning.

Your day looks like this:

You need to travel 6 miles, bake a cake for 1 hour 20 minutes, and wrap gifts that take 15 minutes each.

You have 3 gifts to wrap.

Your walking speed is 3 miles per hour.

Step 1: 

Work out the travel time

Time = distance ÷ speed

6 ÷ 3 = 2 hours

Remember the DST Triangle.

If you need any resources to build this skill, drop me an email or leave a comment for FREE RESOURCES ON MULTI-STEP CALCULATIONS.

Step 2: 

Work out the total wrapping time

3 gifts X 15 minutes each = 45 minutes

Step 3: 

Add baking and wrapping time

1 hour 20 minutes + 45 minutes = 2 hours 5 minutes

If you need any resources to build this skill, drop me an email or leave a comment for FREE RESOURCES ON MULTI-STEP CALCULATIONS.

Step 4: Add the travel time to find the full total

2 hours + 2 hours 5 minutes = 4 hours 5 minutes

Skills that Count Check

Break tasks into small steps.

Convert all times carefully.

Add totals only when each part is clear.

The Skills that Count

Multi-step calculations prepare you for real decision-making, time planning and confident problem solving during the Christmas countdown.

Have a great Christmas with the ones that mean the most to you.

The Maths in a Month Team.