In this week's blog post, I will be talking about how important it is to make math meaningful. During this week's lesson, we were taught how to create rich math tasks that allow students to be fully engaged and find meaning in the activities.
After doing some exploration on the handy-dandy Internet, I found a great resource that explains what it means when students do rich tasks. According to an article found on Enriching Mathematics called, What is a Mathematical Rich Task? a rich task:
- opens up mathematics
- transforms the subject from a collection of memorized procedures and facts into a living, connected whole
- results in a learner process far more engaging, interesting, and powerful which is likely to "lead to a lasting assimilation of the material for use in both further mathematical study and the wider context of applications"
The source further explores why it is important to use mathematical rich tasks in the classroom. The list includes, but is not limited to:
- allows students to work at a range of levels
- allows students to extend knowledge or apply knowledge in new contexts
- allows students to broaden their problem-solving skills.
I did some exploring and found an excellent resource that provides educators with interesting and engaging math tasks to share with students. Educational Designer provides one example where students are asked to solve a series of math problems involving addition, multiplication, and division.
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| Supermarket Carts
The diagram shows 12 supermarket carts that have been "nested" together. They also show that the length of a single supermarket cart is 96cm and that each cart sticks out 30cm beyond the previous one in line.
1. How long will a row of 2 carts be? 3 carts? 12 carts?
2. Create a rule that will tell you the length of storage space needed when all you know is the number of supermarket carts to be stored.
3. Now work out the number of carts that can fit in a space of 5m long.
Retrieved from http://educationaldesigner.org/ed/volume2/issue5/article19/
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I really like your title of your blog post for this week! Very creative way to link it to what we had discussed during this week about rich tasks! I also like the picture example you provided to show how rich math tasks can be used in the classroom. Great post ! :)
ReplyDeleteCatherine,
ReplyDeletethank you for linking that article from NRich, the whole website is a great resource that I will refer to when creating Enriched tasks for Mathematics in my classroom. The shopping cart problem alone provides a good exemplar of what a rich problem-solving activity could look like in a classroom. I also like the inclusion of creating a rule and sharing the multiple ways to solve the problem with peers; this reminds me of the math modules we viewed this week, and how they discussed that students who collaborated in math class were more likely to succeed than students that chose to tackle everything on their own. It is so important that we give students a chance to collaborate with their peers and share unique approaches to problem solving!
Catherine,
ReplyDeleteI really liked your blog post. One of the things that made math such a dull subject was the fact that we were learning it the traditional way and using worksheets as a means of learning the unit. I like the rich task you applied because it definitely shows the different tasks that need to be done before the answer is found. Really nice job.