Turn the math dial down?

This year, the PUHSD mathematics teachers have been identifying mathematical tasks to develop specific student understanding.  Our new curriculum is based on developing rigor.  So...what is RIGOR?  I attended the NCTM winter institute last month and saw the picture of the stool as a great representation of our pursuit for implementing and sustaining rich tasks.  We have found when we are aiming for student understanding and our mathematical tasks are missing one of the components, the students struggle to meet the intent of the essential learning standards.  

One of our challenges is how do you implement high-cognitive demand tasks without having students shut down.  To support our work, Dan Meyers was our special guest in January.  He worked with us on how to “turn the math dial down” and when to "turn the math dial up."  This is an odd phrase for a mathematics class, because you would think that the math dial should be up at all times. To create interest and motivate students to be problem solvers and use their math tool belt, sometimes we need to turn the math dial down to open up the task and build interest.  Dan modeled several examples of what this looks like in practice and there are some great examples on the website http://phx15.mrmeyer.com/.

Over the past few weeks, teachers have had the opportunity to practice their new learning and to add a bit of fun (through our love for competition), we hosted a “Math American Idol” competition.  Teachers were asked to submit their “makeover tasks” to SharePoint and Dan Meyers would pick his favorite ones!  

The results are in and the winners are Jeanette Scott, Instructional Leader from Cesar Chavez and Jamie Hayes, Math Teacher from Alhambra HS.  Click HERE to see their tasks and thanks to everyone that submitted tasks.  

Jeanette submitted a task about renting a van and here is what Dan had to say, "Loved the cost of the van problem, especially for including a blank for unnecessary information. That's an often overlooked task that adults do all the time when they solve problems!" 

Mrs. Hayes submitted the area of a shaded region task and Dan said, "I also loved the simplicity of the area of the lawn problems, how she just deleted the measurements and increased the cognitive demand and interest several-fold."