Jacob has 5 fishbowls. There are 3 fish in each bowl. How many fish does Jacob have?

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Video Transcript

Jacob has five fishbowls. There are three fish in each bowl. How many fish does Jacob have?

In this question, we need to find out how many fish Jacob has. Now we’re given a picture to help us, so we could just count all the fish: one, two, three, and so on. But counting one by one like this can take a while, and there are quicker ways we could find the answer. Let’s use the information that we’re given to help us. To begin with, we’re told that Jacob has five fishbowls: one, two, three, four, five. We’re then told that there are three fish in each bowl. They’re easy to spot in each bowl because they’re three different colors. Each bowl contains a yellow fish, a red fish, and an orange fish. Every bowl has an equal group of fish. In other words, each bowl contains the same number of fish.

So, really, what this question is asking us is five bowls of three fish is how many fish? Or five groups of three is what? To find the answer, we could count in threes, one for each fish bowl. Otherwise, we need to find the answer to three plus three plus three plus three plus three. We know that three plus another three makes six. And if we add another group of three to six, we have seven, eight, nine. If we add another group of three to nine, we have 10, 11, 12. That’s four groups of three or four fish bowls that we’ve added. We just need to add one more lot of three. 12 add another three is 13, 14, 15.

You know, if we knew how to skip count in threes, we could have found the answer even quicker. Three, six, nine, 12, 15. Five bowls of three fish is 15 fish. Five groups of three is 15. The total number of fish that Jacob has is 15.
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