Rich Math Tasks

Let’s face it -teaching is a demanding profession. A lot is expected of us. We need to cover a lot of material and differentiate to reach every student. This week’s discussion regarding rich tasks really made sense to me as this approach really benefits both teachers and students.

At first, I thought it seemed kind of complicated. We, as teachers, should weave other subjects such as language, science, art and social science as we teach math. Math is all around us and we need to incorporate this wide-angle lens approach. It’s not the easiest thing to do and it’s truly best done with other teachers, but I really believe that with time and practice, it will become much easier! It is also a much more efficient way to teach as you are combining content and skills in two or more subjects, which enables students to meet expectations in multiple subjects within a lesson or task.

Math and the world around us

Math is an important part of our everyday life, not just something learned in school. We do come across numbers throughout our day, but we also come across geometric shapes and patterns. Learning about the concept of patterns in math is an important foundation that helps students understand patterns in numbers and equations.

This week, we discussed tessellations. Tessellations are created when a shape, that is continuously repeated, covers a plane without any gaps. 

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It was interesting to learn that tessellations occur naturally and can be used in teaching art by looking at the various patterns in works of art such as mosaics and abstract art. 

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We can study the structure of plant cells in science. I'm starting to notice patterns a lot more - I feel that the more I look for math, the more I notice!   For more ideas about tessellations in our world, have a look at this site: http://www.tessellations.org/tessellations-all-around-us.shtml.

Teaching in the Information Age

Math is all around us. But today, there is so much information that is accessible to so many people. Today’s students are inundated with text and media in our everchanging fast-paced world and are challenged to make sense of it and become competent 21^st century learners. 

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How do we help them become math literate? How do we make math relevant and meaningful? Today, teaching math is so much more than a textbook. As a teacher, you need to be creative in designing your lessons and incorporating real world activities. As a student, I grew up learning math from a textbook. I still liked math, but I think I would have liked it more had I been given richer, more authentic math tasks or projects

Students need to be able to identify with the math concepts in real-life situations!  Think about it, wouldn’t this word challenge be more fun than the all too common worksheet of addition questions?

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This word challenge game can be used as a mental math activity that covers addition as well as spelling! It’s a group activity with a low floor – each student can automatically start as everyone has a name.

Rich Math Tasks

Jennifer Piggot’s "Rich tasks and contexts" article is an excellent resource that details elements of a rich task or a "good" problem. We need to know how to present a problem in a way that makes it rich. Piggot states that rich tasks provide students with the “…opportunity not only to question and develop their understandings of mathematical ideas but also to gain in confidence that they can apply their knowledge in a range of contexts, even unfamiliar ones.”

How to create a rich math task:

-       Identify issues or ideas that are important to students (i.e. sports, movies, video games, pets)

-       Introduce multiple perspectives – there is more than one way to look at a problem and answer a problem

-       Keep the conversation going

-       Students should collaborate and discuss

-       Keep it manageable and appropriate for students’ abilities

-       Have multiple entry points and open-ended

-       Make it authentic, something that reflects the real world and current events (i.e. current season, Olympics, hockey playoffs).

-       Social justice issues (i.e. clean water for our Indigenous people) are very good ways to engage older students in particular

-       Encourage student creativity in thinking

-       Students should be able to test their predictions and apply their knowledge to other situations

There are a lot of good resources that we can use as references in the creation of rich math tasks such as 5280 Math http://www.5280math.com/noticing-and-wondering/, YouCubed https://www.youcubed.org/tasks/, Lesson Sketch http://www.lessonsketch.org/emaths-materials/, and Dan Meyer’s 3-Act Math Tasks  http://bit.ly/2QxxvZn.

But sometimes, the rich activity can be as simple as a story, which my peer, Teddy, discussed in her blog. I think that it was a very effective way to end her unit as it was engaging, collaborative and enjoyable for her students!