Comments on: Rich Math Tasks

By: The sub trick that kills (On engagement) – logs and reflections

The sub trick that kills (On engagement) – logs and reflections — Wed, 14 Jun 2017 00:25:34 +0000

[…] belonging in the class of low-floor, high-ceiling tasks (also briefly discussed by Dan Meyer, among many others) – the floor certainly is low, as the majority of even the most struggling high school […]

By: xiousgeonz

xiousgeonz — Fri, 16 Aug 2013 14:38:29 +0000

Welp, generally when the teacher doesn’t like a task, it doesn’t work.
When I taught at The New Community School, I gained a real respect for practicing the stuff that the students had trouble with. Now, these were students with specific language-based learning disorders, so stuff that most folks developed fluency in easily were challenging to them… mmoste of ’em.
I had the job of crunching the evaluative data at the end of the year. I knew all the teachers and some of ’em were very. methodical. about. the. drill. [Extremely important detail: the ‘drill’ was in 1:1 or at most 1:5 settings, so it was the drill *for that student,* not ‘here’s the drill for today from the book.”]
It really annoyed me that… year after year… even the smartest, quickest students who I wouldn’t have thought would benefit from the drill– I’d have thought they’d disengage — did better if they had one of the teachers that always. did. the. drill.
Even before I was crunching data, I was trying it, on the grounds that these folks really were utterly invested in the students… and I was surprised to find that … no, the students didn’t mind the daily drill. It wasn’t always their favorite thing (though for some it was), and some didn’t like it for a while… but… appropriate drill works, and they started seeing the benefits. Danged if it wasn’t pretty much a life lesson about delayed gratification.
OUt here last year we had a pilot of a new “Math Literacy” course that’s much more conceptual and rich and all that good stuff you talk about. HOwever, students also have to grind out a mess of stuff in ALEKS. That *isn’t* as good at figuring out their individual needs (no matter what the claims of tech fanboys are — there’s a guy on a discussion list now claiming that “most instructional strategies are too difficult to implement by human teachers,” and it’s the ‘diagnostic/intervention’ stuff that computers do better…. um, yea.
Still, at the end of the semester, after grumbling and grousing along the way, at least half a dozen students acknowledged that it had *really* helped in the long run to have ground out the drill, because knowing how to just grab that tool and use it when a problem asked for it let them get things done.

By: mrdardy

mrdardy — Fri, 16 Aug 2013 12:07:01 +0000

Quick follow up thought – I agree with your original supposition that there is still a place for some skills-based practice for our kids. The discussion I’ll be having with my department about this will go like this: (1) We need to find time/space for rich, challenging tasks for our students. That space should (almost) always be when we are together in class and can share ideas. (2) When we ask students to work at home on our own we should be careful that these HW assignments concentrate on skills practice and that there is time for checking in on answers for these. I am trying to set up a distinction between exercises and problems.

By: mrdardy

mrdardy — Fri, 16 Aug 2013 11:54:21 +0000

What a terrific and timely post. I am preparing my thoughts for opening department meetings in a little over a week and I now have some important ideas to chew on. Two things here that I love. (1) Synthesis – This is CRUCIAL whether you are teaching 3rd grade or Algebra I or AP Calculus or anything in between. I feel that it is SO important to ask people to draw upon past knowledge, not just the present ideas with which they are engaged. Ideally (and this is more possible at the higher levels) you can ask students to reach out to ideas and skills from other subjects as well. (2) Any mention of Polya makes me happy. Trying to instill either through modeling problem-solving behavior or by explicitly outlining an appropriate strategy such as the one Polya presents can give the students a powerful base on which to grow. I need to organize these thoughts rattling around my head to share with my department. Thanks for setting off sparks!