1. Teacher Guide
This lesson is designed to teach kids to ask a critical thinking question that you can’t just put into a search box to solve. To do that, we encourage them with smaller questions that search can help them answer. Make sure that you read the notes for each slide: they not only give you teaching tips but also provide answers and hints so you can help the kids if they are having trouble.
Remember, you can always send feedback to the Bing in the Classroom team at You can learn more about the program at bing.com/classroom and follow the daily lessons on our Partners In Learning site.
Want to extend today’s lesson? Consider using Skype in the Classroom to arrange for your class to chat with another class in today’s location. And if you are using Windows 8, you can also use the Bing apps to learn more about this location and topic; the Travel and News apps in particular make great teaching tools.
Nell Bang-Jensen is a teacher and theater artist living in Philadelphia, PA. Her passion for arts education has led her to a variety of roles including developing curriculum for Philadelphia Young Playwrights and teaching at numerous theaters and schools around the city. She works with playwrights from ages four to ninety on developing new work and is especially interested in alternative literacies and theater for social change. A graduate of Swarthmore College, she currently works in the Artistic Department of the Wilma Theater and, in addition to teaching, is a freelance actor and dramaturg. In 2011, Nell was named a Thomas J. Watson Fellow and spent her fellowship year traveling to seven countries studying how people get their names.
This lesson is designed to teach the Common Core State Standard: Operations & Algebraic Thinking
CCSS.Math.Content.4.OA.A.1 Interpret a multiplication equation as a comparison, e.g., interpret 35 = 5 × 7 as a statement that 35 is 5 times as many as 7 and 7 times as many as 5. Represent verbal statements of multiplicative comparisons as multiplication equations.
CCSS.Math.Content.4.OA.A.2 Multiply or divide to solve word problems involving multiplicative comparison, e.g., by using drawings and equations with a symbol for the unknown number to represent the problem, distinguishing multiplicative comparison from additive comparison.1
CCSS.Math.Content.4.OA.A.3 Solve multistep word problems posed with whole numbers and having whole-number answers using the four operations, including problems in which remainders must be interpreted. Represent these problems using equations with a letter standing for the unknown quantity. Assess the reasonableness of answers using mental computation and estimation strategies including rounding.

2. If the entire contents of the Bodleian Library were evenly divided up among the students at the University of Oxford, how many items would they each get?
© Charlie Harding/Corbis
Having this up as kids come in is a great settle down activity. You can start class by asking them for thoughts about the picture or about ideas on how they could solve the question of the day.

3. If the entire contents of the Bodleian Library were evenly divided up among the students at the University of Oxford, how many items would they each get?
Bodleian Library, or “The Bod” as some call it, is the University of Oxford’s primary research library, comprising five buildings. Officially, the history of Bodleian dates all the way back to 1602, though more informal libraries were part of the university’s campus for nearly three centuries prior.
Non-students are allowed to use the vast collections at the Bodleian, but to get a card you must not only abide by the rules of the facility, but swear an oath upon receiving your card.
Depending on time, you can either have students read this silently to themselves, have one of them read out loud, or read it out loud yourself.

4. If the entire contents of the Bodleian Library were evenly divided up among the students at the University of Oxford, how many items would they each get? 1
Web Search
What different kind s of students are there at the University of Oxford? How many students are there? 2
What items can be found in the Bodleian Library? How many items are there? 3
Why does the Bodleian Library have such a large collection? How long has this library been acquiring items? 4
According to concepts of place value, how many zeroes would a million have? A thousand? 5
Thinking
Once you know how many items each student would get, what are two different equations you could use to check your work?
There are a couple of ways to use this slide, depending on how much technology you have in your classroom. You can have students find answers on their own, divide them into teams to have them do all the questions competitively, or have each team find the answer to a different question and then come back together. If you’re doing teams, it is often wise to assign them roles (one person typing, one person who is in charge of sharing back the answer, etc.)

5. If the entire contents of the Bodleian Library were evenly divided up among the students at the University of Oxford, how many items would they each get? 5
Minutes
You can adjust this based on how much time you want to give kids. If a group isn’t able to answer in 5 minutes, you can give them the opportunity to update at the end of class or extend time.

6. If the entire contents of the Bodleian Library were evenly divided up among the students at the University of Oxford, how many items would they each get? 1
Web Search
What different kind s of students are there at the University of Oxford? How many students are there? 2
What items can be found in the Bodleian Library? How many items are there? 3
Why does the Bodleian Library have such a large collection? How long has this library been acquiring items? 4
According to concepts of place value, how many zeroes would a million have? A thousand? 5
Thinking
Once you know how many items each student would get, what are two different equations you could use to check your work?
You can ask the students verbally or let one of them come up and insert the answer or show how they got it. This way, you also have a record that you can keep as a class and share with parents, others.

7. If the entire contents of the Bodleian Library were evenly divided up among the students at the University of Oxford, how many items would they each get? 1
Web Search
What different kind s of students are there at the University of Oxford? How many students are there?
(Possible queries: “University of Oxford student population”, “how many students are there at the University of Oxford?”).
From
There are more than 22,000 students at Oxford, including 11,832 undergraduates and 9,857 postgraduates.

8. If the entire contents of the Bodleian Library were evenly divided up among the students at the University of Oxford, how many items would they each get? 2
Web Search
What items can be found in the Bodleian Library? How many items are there?
(Possible queries: “Bodleian Library”, “what is in the Bodleian Library”, “Bodleian Library contents”).
From
The combined collections of the Libraries group number more than 11 million printed items, in addition to 50,000 e-journals and vast quantities of materials in many other formats.

9. If the entire contents of the Bodleian Library were evenly divided up among the students at the University of Oxford, how many items would they each get? 3
Web Search
Why does the Bodleian Library have such a large collection? How long has this library been acquiring items?
(Possible queries: “Bodleian Library history”, “Bodleian Library collection”).
From
Oxford’s libraries are among the most celebrated in the world, not only for their incomparable collections of books and manuscripts, but also for their buildings, some of which have remained in continuous use since the Middle Ages. Among them the Bodleian, the chief among the University’s libraries, has a special place. First opened to scholars in 1602, it incorporates an earlier library erected by the University in the fifteenth century to house books donated by Humfrey, Duke of Gloucester. Since 1602 it has expanded, slowly at first but with increasing momentum over the last 150 years, to keep pace with the ever-growing accumulation of books and papers, but the core of the old buildings has remained intact.
Students can use this information to determine that Bodleian Library has been collecting items for around 412 years ( = 412).

10. If the entire contents of the Bodleian Library were evenly divided up among the students at the University of Oxford, how many items would they each get? 4
Web Search
According to concepts of place value, how many zeroes would a million have? A thousand?
(Possible queries: “for kids, understanding place value”, “place value examples, million, thousand”).
Students can use online resources (such as the one found here: to think about what one million (1,000,000) and one thousand (1,000) look like when written out. They should articulate that one million would have six zeroes and one thousand would have three.
This question is designed to help students start thinking about how the large numbers they will be working with are divisible and the amount they actually represent.

11. If the entire contents of the Bodleian Library were evenly divided up among the students at the University of Oxford, how many items would they each get? 5
Thinking
Once you know how many items each student would get, what are two different equations you could use to check your work?
Students should think about how they could work backwards to check how everything balances out once they have an answer. If the number of items each students get is represented by “n”, the equations to check their work could be as follows:
n x number of students = number of items in the Bodleian Library
Number of items in the Bodleian Library / n = number of students
Note: It may help for students to first write out the equation for how they will solve to find “n”. For example, Number of items in the Bodleian Library / number of students = n. They can then think about how to reconfigure this formula to solve for one of the other variables.

12. If the entire contents of the Bodleian Library were evenly divided up among the students at the University of Oxford, how many items would they each get?
This slide is a chance to summarize the information from the previous slides to build your final answer to the question. At this point, students should have gathered that the Bodleian Library has around 11 million items in it, and the total student population of the University of Oxford is around 22,000. Based on what they have researched about place value, they should recognize that 11 million would be written out as follows: 11,000,000. They can then use these numbers to create a mathematical equation and solve for the number of items.
11,000,000 (contents of Bodleian Library) / 22,000 (number of students) = 500.
In other words, if the entire contents of the Bodleian Library were divided up among the students at the University of Oxford, they would each get approximately 500 items.