Build the answer one step at a time. Choose an operation, then choose the two numbers it works on.
Step 1 works out the pens that arrived: 60. Step 2 works out the pens left once the broken ones go: 56. Step 3 works out the pens one class gets: 7. So the answer is 7 pens. Doing the steps the other way round does not work, because the second step needs the first one's answer before it can start.
What to say if they get stuck
You cannot get there in one go. What can you work out first, from two numbers the story already gives you?
Once a step is done, its answer sits on the bench and can be used by the next step.
This problem takes 3 steps. The last one ends with pens.
The 11+ does not test these skills in isolation, and practising one in the wrong order wastes the practice. These are the skills the curriculum map connects this one to.
A multi-step context may compose a multiplication step.
How solve a multi-step problem differs from the skills beside it
The same exercise practises several skills, and telling them apart is often the difficulty rather than the exercise itself. On this page the skill is: select and perform a short sequence of operations in context, and it stops where two or three dependent operations; record step count.
Choose and perform one operation in a short context. Exactly one operation is required.
Questions parents ask about solve a multi-step problem
Answered from what the skill map records about this skill, not from a template. Every answer here is on the page, and the same questions are the page's FAQ structured data.
Select and perform a short sequence of operations in context. It is one of 55 named maths skills in the 11+, in the problem strand, and this page carries 1 interactive exercise that practises it.
More packs does not always mean more stickers. The wrong answers on this skill are built out of that, not out of random numbers, so it is worth naming out loud before your child meets it under time pressure.
Point at the next move rather than explaining the whole rule. Work out each group's sticker total by multiplying its packs by its stickers per pack, and only then compare the two totals.
The skill map draws the line here: Two or three dependent operations; record step count. A question past that line is testing a different named maths skill, which is worth knowing before you spend a week practising the wrong one.
The skill map connects it to add whole numbers or decimals and multiply whole numbers or decimals. A multi-step context may compose an addition step. A multi-step context may compose a multiplication step. Each of those has its own page here.
Use Step Builder, embedded on this page. It is the exercise the skill map attaches to solve a multi-step problem, it runs in the browser with no account to make, nothing is scored, and nothing a child does here is recorded or sent anywhere. It also has its own link, so you can send it to a child without sending them anywhere else first.
Knowing which maths topic to practise is most of the work
A free diagnostic covers arithmetic, fractions, geometry, measure and data handling, and comes back with the topics to spend the next few weeks on.
