Mathsational

What makes a rich task?  It needs to be accessible to many students (have a low floor) yet offer enough extension to challenge advanced learners (have a high ceiling).  Often, the task will have some sort of context or application.  The task should be open enough that students could solve the problem in several ways and may even be able to come up with follow-up questions.  The task may be solvable in an eloquent stream lined way and may be solved in unusual and creative ways.  The task should encourage collaboration.  It might result in a discovery of a new concept and it should certainly be a positive experience for students. One of my favorite resources for rich tasks is the Mathematics Assessment Project.  I wrote about it here about a year ago. Another source that I like, but have not used quite as extensively as MAP is Illustrative Mathematics.  They offer course blueprints aligned with the national Common Core standards.  Here is t...

One of my favorite resources is the  Mathematics Assessment Project .  These are scripted lessons, which at first was off-putting to me.  However, once I implemented a few lessons (with modifications as I saw fit), I accepted them as exemplary lessons.   While I don't always follow the script, I do believe that the lessons have been vetted and shown to be well thought out.  I like the script as a starting point and I like having a model to work with.  I especially like the common misconceptions and the suggested questions that could be posed to students. Here are two of the most recent lessons that I have used in my classroom. Defining lines by points, slopes, and equations My favorite part of many of these lessons is the collaborative section.  This lesson contains a matching activity where various information is missing from some of the pairs.  Students can more easily match the pairs with all the information given and then expand t...