“Number Boxes”

A few weeks ago I was introduced to Jenna Laib‘s game “Number Boxes” and was very interested in using it as a dynamic game to help students learn a variety of new content — Jenna’s blog explaining the game can be found here: “One of My Favorite Games: Number Boxes“.

Basically the game involves students rolling dice (or spinning a spinner / drawing a card) to generate a random number and placing that number in one of their empty number boxes one-at-a-time. The game can progress in a variety of ways:

Rolling 1 number at a time, create the largest number you can.

Rolling one number at a time, create 2 numbers that will add to the largest number.

Rolling one number at a time, create an expression that is as close to 2000 as possible.

As you can see, the game is quite adaptive to the sizes of numbers and concepts your students are comfortable with. As students roll/spin/draw a number, they have to place it on the board. What makes this tricky is not knowing what future numbers will be. In the board above, you can see that there is also a “Throwaway” box that students can use if they do not like one of the numbers rolled/spun/drawn. This game is an excellent example of a “Dynamic Game” or “Dynamic Practice” as students are following the ideals on the right side of the chart below:

Originally published here

Blow is a gallery of some possible adaptations of this game or linked here is a slideshow

• 

• 

• 

• 

• 

• 

• 

• 

Metric Conversions

I however, wanted to use Jenna’s game to help students practice a concept they often have difficulty with – Metric Conversions. Once students have had many opportunities to estimate and measure various distances, capacities, and masses, they should be able to start making connections between all of the units. I suggest a good balance between using problems that help students make sense of the relationships between the units, and opportunities to practice conversions on their own. However, instead of randomly generated worksheets or other rote practice, I think Jenna’s game could work perfectly. Take a look at some examples:

Rolling one number at a time, find the largest total distance possible

Rolling one number at a time, find the largest total mass possible

Rolling one number at a time, find the largest possible distance

Rolling one number at a time, how close to 5km can you get?

Reflection

It is important to offer tasks that allow students to make choices and decisions like the ones offered in this game. Learning needs to be more than handing out assignments, and collecting work… Learning takes time! Students need more time to explore, see what works, have peers challenge each others’ thinking, make important connections… Hopefully you can see these opportunities in this task.

Final Thoughts:

• If you play one of these games, or your own version, will you first offer a simplified version so your students get familiar with the game, or will you dive into the content you want to teach?
• Would you prefer your students to play this game as a class or with a group, a partner, or independently?
• How will you build in conversations with students so they discuss which numbers they think should be the highest / lowest numbers? How will you offer time for these strategic discussions?
• Should we adapt these to continually offer more challenge and deeper learning, or offer more opportunities to play the same game board? How will we know when to adapt and change?
• What does “practice” look like in your classroom?  Does it involve thinking or decisions?  Would it be more engaging for your students to make practice involve more thinking?
• How does this game relate to the topic of “engagement”?  Is engagement about making tasks more fun or about making tasks require more thought?  Which view of engagement do you and your students subscribe to?
• How have your students experienced measurement concepts like these? Are they learning procedural rules or are they thinking about the actual sizes of numbers / sizes of the units involved?
• As the teacher, what will you be doing when students are playing? How might listening to student thinking help you learn more about your students? (See: Noticing and Wondering: A powerful tool for assessment)

I’d love to continue the conversation about “practicing” mathematics.  Leave a comment here or on Twitter @MarkChubb3

Advertisement

Reasoning & Proving

This week I had the pleasure to see Dan Meyer, Cathy Fosnot and Graham Fletcher at OAME’s Leadership conference.

Each of the sessions were inspiring and informative… but halfway through the conference I noticed a common message that the first 2 keynote speakers were suggesting:

Dan Meyer showed us several examples of what mathematical surprise looks like in mathematics class (so students will be interested in making sense of what they are learning, and to get our students really thinking), while Cathy Fosnot shared with us how important it is for students to be puzzled in the process of developing as young mathematicians.  Both messages revolved around what I would consider the most important Process Expectation in the Ontario curriculum – Reasoning and Proving.

---

Reasoning and Proving

While some see Reasoning and Proving as being about how well an answer is constructed for a given problem – how well communicated/justified a solution is – this is not at all how I see it.  Reasoning is about sense-making… it’s about generalizing why things work… it’s about knowing if something will always, sometimes or never be true…it is about the “that’s why it works” kinds of experiences we want our students engaged in.  Reasoning is really what mathematics is all about.  It’s the pursuit of trying to help our students think mathematically (hence the name of my blog site).

---

A Non-Example of Reasoning and Proving

In the Ontario curriculum, students in grade 7 are expected to be able to:

• identify, through investigation, the minimum side and angle information (i.e.,side-side-side; side-angle-side; angle-side-angle) needed to describe a unique triangle

Many textbooks take an expectation like this and remove the need for reasoning.  Take a look:

As you can see, the textbook here shares that there are 3 “conditions for congruence”.  It shares the objective at the top of the page.  Really there is nothing left to figure out, just a few questions to complete.  You might also notice, that the phrase “explain your reasoning” is used here… but isn’t used in the sense-making way suggested earlier… it is used as a synonym for “show your work”.  This isn’t reasoning!  And there is no “identifying through investigation” here at all – as the verbs in our expectation indicate!

---

A Example of Reasoning and Proving

Instead of starting with a description of which sets of information are possible minimal information for triangle congruence, we started with this prompt:

Given a few minutes, each student created their own triangles, measured the side lengths and angles, then thought of which 3 pieces of information (out of the 6 measurements they measured) they would share.  We noticed that each successful student either shared 2 angles, with a side length in between the angles (ASA), or 2 side lengths with the angle in between the sides (SAS).  We could have let the lesson end there, but we decided to ask if any of the other possible sets of 3 pieces of information could work:

While most textbooks share that there are 3 possible sets of minimal information, 2 of which our students easily figured out, we wondered if any of the other sets listed above will be enough information to create a unique triangle.  Asking the original question didn’t offer puzzlement or surprise because everyone answered the problem without much struggle.  As math teachers we might be sure about ASA, SAS and SSS, but I want you to try the other possible pieces of information yourself:

Create triangle ABC where AB=8cm, BC=6cm, ∠BCA=60°

Create triangle FGH where ∠FGH=45°, ∠GHF=100°, HF=12cm

Create triangle JKL where ∠JKL=30°, ∠KLJ=70°, ∠LJK=80°

If you were given the information above, could you guarantee that everyone would create the exact same triangles?  What if I suggested that if you were to provide ANY 4 pieces of information, you would definitely be able to create a unique triangle… would that be true?  Is it possible to supply only 2 pieces of information and have someone create a unique triangle?  You might be surprised here… but that requires you to do the math yourself:)

---

Final Thoughts

Graham Fletcher in his closing remarks asked us a few important questions:

• Are you the kind or teacher who teaches the content, then offers problems (like the textbook page in the beginning)?  Or are you the kind of teacher who uses a problem to help your students learn?
• How are you using surprise or puzzlement in your classroom?  Where do you look for ideas?
• If you find yourself covering information, instead of helping your students learn to think mathematically, you might want to take a look at resources that aim to help you teach THROUGH problem solving (I got the problem used here in Marian Small’s new Open Questions resource).  Where else might you look?
• What does Day 1 look like when learning a new concept?
• Do you see Reasoning and Proving as a way to have students to show their work (like the textbook might suggest) or do you see Reasoning and Proving as a process of sense-making (as Marian Small shares)?
• Do your students experience moments of cognitive disequilibrium… followed by time for them to struggle independently or with a partner?  Are they regularly engaged in sense-making opportunities, sharing their thinking, debating…?
• The example I shared here isn’t the most flashy example of surprise, but I used it purposefully because I wanted to illustrate that any topic can be turned into an opportunity for students to do the thinking.  I would love to discuss a topic that you feel students can’t reason through… Let’s think together about if it’s possible to create an experience where students can experience mathematical surprise… or puzzlement… or be engaged in sense-making…  Let’s think together about how we can make Reasoning and Proving a focus for you and your students!

I’d love to continue the conversation.  Write a response, or send me a message on Twitter ( @markchubb3 ).

The Zone of Optimal Confusion

In the Ontario curriculum we have many expectations (standards) that tell us students are expected to, “Determine through investigation…” or at least contain the phrase “…through investigation…”.  In fact, in every grade there are many expectations with these phrases. While these expectations are weaved throughout our curriculum, and are particularly noticeable throughout concepts that are new for students, the reality is that many teachers might not be familiar with what it looks like for students to determine something on their own.  Probably in part because this was not how we experienced mathematics as students ourselves!

First of all, I believe the reason behind why investigating is included in our curriculum is an important conversation!   I’ve shared this before, but maybe it will help explain why we want our students to investigate:

The chart shows 3 different teaching approaches and details for each (for more thoughts about the chart you might be interested in What does Day 1 Look Like). Hopefully you have made the connection between the Constructivist approach and the act of “determining through investigation.”  Having our students construct their understanding can’t be overstated. For those students you have in your classroom that typically aren’t engaged, or who give up easily, or who typically struggle… this process of determining through investigation is the missing ingredient in their development. Skip this step and start with you explaining procedures, and you lose several students!

Traditionally, however, many teachers’ goal was to scaffold the learning.  They believed that a gradual release of responsibilities would be the most helpful.  Cathy Seeley in her book Making Sense of Math: How to Help Every Student Become a Mathematical Thinker and Problem Solver explains the issue clearly:

In the two pieces above Cathy explains the “upside-down teaching” approach.  This is exactly the approach we believe our curriculum is suggesting when it says “determine through investigation,”  and exactly the approach suggested here:

Page 24 of the Ontario Curriculum

---

At the heart of this is the idea of “productive struggle”, we want our students actively constructing their own thinking.  However, I wonder if we could ever explain what “productive struggle” looks / feels like without ever experiencing it ourselves?  How might the following graphic help us reflect on our own understanding of “productive struggle” and “engagement”?

Research Gate, Confusion can be Beneficial for Learning

---

I think it would be a wonderful opportunity for us to share problems and tasks that allow for productive struggle, that have student reasoning as its goal, problems / tasks that fit into this “zone of optimal confusion”.

In the end, we know that these tasks, facilitated well, have the potential for deep learning because the act of being confused, working through this confusion, then consolidating the learning effectively is how lasting learning happens!

Let’s commit to sharing a sample, send a link to a problem / task that offers students to be confused and work through that confusion to deepen understanding.  Let’s continue sharing so that we know what these ideals look like for ourselves, so we can experience them with our own students!