Non Curricular Tasks

In my 25 years of teaching, I’ve always maintained that I wasn’t interested in teaching calculators.  You know the calculator kids —the students that can calculate relatively quickly.  They may have been told for years how “good” at math they are.  These students are the first ones to anxiously put their hands up while the other students start shutting down.  This is not the environment that I want to facilitate.

 I try to instill in my students that everyone can do math.  We know that everyone of our students is on their own learning journey.  While they are on their journeys…it’s my job to instill in them that mathematicians are problem solvers.  Mathematicians persevere, tinker, and question.  

How do we provide space for our students to build up their endurance for problem solving?  In my curriculum, I usually plan for 3 act tasks and performance tasks.   Additionally, I carve out an hour on Fridays for “Fun Fridays.”  I essentially have planned for non curricular tasks that include puzzles, brain teasers, and games.  I view it as sacred time because I can get so much information about how a child perceives math just from these activities.

For instance…here’s one of my favorites.

     Yes—the water jug task has been seen in movies such as Die Hard, however I don’t tell the kids that because they’ll go straight to YouTube.  I have my students work in partners and tell them that they need to write directions and draw pictures of how to get 4 gallons of water.  The “rules” are that they are allowed to use as much water as they want.  

Usually within minutes, I get 1-2 kids that yell out they “got” it.  I ask them to explain it to me and I always hear “half” of this and “half” of that.  Nope.  They are not allowed to take half of any of the jugs because it can be inaccurate.  They also tell me about the ridges on each bottle which might help them.  I tell them that the containers may not have ridges so they can’t depend on that.

In 2 session of the productive struggle, I usually get a few that have figured it out.  Check out the sample below.  I really like to include writing because students need to practice writing about math.

Another simplistic tasks that hurts their brains is the frog problem (See below).  

What fascinates me about this tasks is students will start plucking numbers without reading what the context is.  They want soooooo badly to do something with 12, 3 and 2.  And then there are some kids that come up with algorithms of their own.  

Then I get some understanding with work like this.   I myself usually draw this problem on a number line to show the students when the frog makes it to the top of the wall, but this shows thought, precision, and an understanding of the context of the problem.  

If you are interested in any non-curricular tasks….I’m willing to share my folder with you.  Go HERE.

Until next time,

Kristen