The Tasks We Serve
By Margaret Williams
MCTM Vice President for Elementary
We’re all too familiar with this phrase:
Math is the only place where someone can buy 64 watermelons and no one wonders why.
Teachers and parents can’t help but smile a little at the goofiness of the context. Still, sometimes a problem slips through that makes some of our students scratch their heads, while others dutifully work through the task without question.
Below is a recent response from a fifth grader to a task. This word problem really is about making sense.
How are the students going to handle the remainder? Will they round up? Down? Will they write the answer as a mixed number? This student took sense-making to another level. He happens to attend his school’s after-school program, Adventures Plus (A+). He KNOWS the rules. Staff can’t drive students anywhere. Everyone knows that. The After-School Club staff would be breaking the law if they transported students using personal vehicles. Why not take a bus and keep everyone out of trouble?
This problem and the student’s answer was posted on Twitter, receiving a huge response. Over 300 likes, replies and retweets! The post caught the attention of Annie Fetter, Sara Van der Werf and Megan Franke. Yes, I’m a shameless namedropper – these women rock!
I’m pretty sure we hit a nerve.
Here’s some of the back story: His district is in Year 1 of a new math curriculum. The questions on this assignment were particularly challenging as they were written with the idea that children had been in the program for some time and were used to the language and models.
According to Janae, his teacher, the student above solved the first problem of the assignment (multiplication) as a direct modeler – drawing everything out and counting by ones. The field trip problem, which was the second problem of the assignment, was the last task he attempted.
What strengths do we see so far? It appears that student engages in tasks that match his experience and when the context makes sense to him, he likely has a way to figure it out.
What could this mean for our work?
The neat thing about the original problem is that it really gets students thinking about what makes sense. What do we do the remainder? Can we have a part of a car? What do we do with the extra children? For many of our students, this problem is powerful just as it is. For others, the context interferes with engagement.
We can celebrate that students need tasks that make sense. That said, how can we accommodate the sense-making needs of students without interfering with the rigor of the task or diminishing the opportunity for productive struggle? That is the question we may want to consider as we look at the work we give your students.