I’m exhausted so I’ll make this brief. I plan to do a more thorough write up on the Curiouser and Curiouser blog this weekend.
The gist: I’m still getting a handle on what students can do with respect to individual and group problem solving skills. Today I gave the standard math students the grade 7 Money Munchers formative assessment lesson designed by the Mathematics Assessment Project task.
Students worked independently for 15 minutes on this task, then I collected it. Over the weekend I’ll look over their work and give them written feedback. When I see them next week the students will work independently for another 10-15 minutes then they’ll work in groups to complete and finalize the task. I guess you could think of it as coming to the task with clues on how to solve it.
Glancing at student work some haven’t thought to estimate the dimensions of a one dollar bill. It seems if the information is not given, it’s not solvable. That’s a problem with textbook-type problems. Students are so used to simple, routine tasks they don’t know how to think and reason.
180 days of math post-its 