For the Love of the Puzzle!

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I often get the question from students of the “why” behind me choosing to be a math teacher. While I have had the pleasure of offering them silly responses (“I spun the wheel”, “I am crazy”, “I wanted a job where I made children suffer”), the truth is this: I love the puzzle. Think about it–isn’t it one of the most satisfying feelings to FINALLY find the solution to a problem you have been working on? Or what about that feeling when you have tried every possible strategy, and then you try one more and the solution just appears? I get excited just imagining that feeling!

Christopher Danielson posted on his blog last summer about some puzzle boards at the Math-On-A-Stick area (blog post here). To summarize, he showed three pictures of how some shape puzzles may appear at any point in time during the fair: neat and tidy, stacked and tidy, and stacked and messy. Spoiler alert: fairgoers showed a greater tendency to spend more time on the stacked and messy boards. We all love a good puzzle, don’t we? 

As we all wind down with our school year, consider ways you can add the element of puzzle to your classroom. I find myself implementing it more by using simple strategies like “Notice and Wonder”, “Would You Rather?”, and fun math puzzles like Kakooma or KenKen. How do you think you would create a “stacked and messy” puzzle for your students to explore? 

Alexis Wolf
Region 4 Director