The Types of Questions we Ask: which categories of questions should we focus on?

I think we can all agree that there are many different ways for our students to show what they know or understand, and that some problems ask for deeper understanding than others. In fact, many standardized math assessments, like PISA, aim to ask students questions at varying difficult levels (PISA uses 6 difficulty levels) to assess the same concept/skill. If we can learn one thing from assessments like these hopefully it is how to expect more of our students by going deeper… and in math class, this means asking better questions.

Robert Kaplinsky is a great example of an educator who has helped us better understand how to ask better questions. His work on Depth of Knowledge (DOK) has helped many teachers reflect on the questions they ask and has offered teachers examples of what higher DOK questions/problems look like.

In Ontario though we actually have an achievement chart that is aimed to help us think more about the types of questions/problems we expect our students be able to do. Basically, it is a rubric showing 4 levels of achievement across 4 categories. In Ontario it is expected that every teacher evaluate their students based on each the these categories. Many teachers, however, struggle to see the differences between these categories. Marian Small recently was the keynote speaker at OAME where she helped us think more about the categories by showing us how to delineate between the different categories of questions/problems:

• Knowledge
• Understanding
• Application
• Thinking

Knowledge vs. Understanding

Below are a few of Marian Small’s examples of questions that are designed to help us see the difference between questions aimed at knowledge and questions aimed at understanding:

As you can see from the above examples, each of the knowledge questions ask students to provide a correct answer. However, each of the understanding questions require students to both get a correct answer AND be able to show that they understand some of the key relationships involved. Marian’s point in showing us these comparisons was to tell us that we need to spend much more time and attention making sure our students understand the math they are learning.

Each of the questions that asks students to show their understanding also help us see what knowledge our students have, but the other way around is not true!

Hopefully you can see the potential benefits of striving for understanding, but I do believe these shifts need to be deliberate. My recommendation to help us aim for understanding is to ask more questions that ask students to:

• Draw a visual representation to show why something works
• Provide an example that fits given criteria
• Explain when examples will or won’t work
• Make choices (i.e., which numbers, visual representations… will be best to show proof)
• show their understanding of key “Big Ideas” and relationships

Application vs. Thinking

Below are a few examples that can help us delineate the differences between application and thinking:

These examples might be particularly important for us to think about. To begin with, application questions often use some or all of the following:

• use a context
• require students to use things they already should know
• provide a picture(s) or example(s) for students to see
• provide almost all of the information and ask the student to find what is missing

Thinking questions, on the other hand, are the basis for what Stein et. al called “Doing Mathematics“. In Marian’s presentation, she discussed with us that these types of questions are why those who enjoy mathematics like doing mathematics. Thinking and reasoning are at the heart of what mathematics is all about! Thinking questions typically require the student to:

• use non-algorithmic thinking
• make sense of the problem
• use relevant knowledge
• notice important features of the problem
• choose a possible solution path and possibly adjust if needed
• persevere to monitor their own progress

Let’s take a minute to compare questions aimed at application and questions aimed at thinking. Application questions, while quite helpful in learning mathematics concepts (contexts should be used AS students learn), they typically offer less depth than thinking questions. In each of the above application questions, a student could easily ignore the context and fall back on learned procedures. On the other hand, each of the thinking questions might require the student to make and test conjectures, using the same procedures repeatedly to find a possible solution.

Ideally, we need to spend more time where our students are thinking… more time discussing thinking questions… and focus more on the important relationships/connections that will arise through working on these problems.

Final Thoughts

Somehow we need to find the right balance between using the 4 types of questions above, however, we need to recognize that most textbooks, most teacher-made assessments, and most online resources focus heavily (if not exclusively) on knowledge and occasionally application. The balance is way off!

Focusing on being able to monitor our own types of questions isn’t enough though. We need to recognize that relationships/connections between concepts/representations are at the heart of expecting more from our students. We need to know that thinking and reasoning are HOW our students should be learning. We need to confront practices that stand in the way of us moving toward understanding and thinking, and set aside resources that focus mainly on knowledge or application. If we want to make strides forward, we need to find resources that will help US understand the material deeper and provide us with good examples.

Questions to Reflect on:

• What did your last quiz or test or exit card look like? What is your current balance of question types?
• What resources do you use? What balance do they have?
• Where do you go to find better Understanding or Thinking questions?
• What was the last problem you did that made you interested in solving it? What was it about that problem that made you interested? Likely it was a Thinking question. What was it about that problem that made it interesting?
• Much of the work related to filling gaps, intervention, assessment driving learning… points teachers toward students’ missing knowledge. How can we focus our attention more toward understanding and thinking given this reality?
• How can we better define “mastery” given the 4 categories above? Mastery must be seen as more than getting a bunch of simple knowledge questions correct!
• Who do you turn to to help you think more about the questions you ask? What professional relationships might be helpful for you?

If you haven’t already, please take a look at Marian Small’s entire presentation where she labels understanding and thinking as the “fundamentals of mathematics”

I’d love to continue the conversation about the questions we ask of our students.  Leave a comment here or on Twitter @MarkChubb3

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Skyscraper Templates – for Relational Rods

Many math educators have come to realize how important it is for students to play in math class. Whether for finding patterns, building curiosity, experiencing math as a beautiful endeavour, or as a source of meaningful practice… games and puzzles are excellent ways for your students to experience mathematics.

Last year I published a number of templates to play a game/puzzle called Skyscrapers (see here for templates) that involved towers of connected cubes. This year, I decided to make an adjustment to this game by changing the manipulative to Relational Rods (Cuisenaire Rods) because I wanted to make sure that more students are becoming more familiar with them.

Skyscraper puzzles are a great way to help our students think about perspective while thinking strategically through each puzzle.  Plus, since they require us to consider a variety of vantage points of a small city block, the puzzles can be used to help our students develop their Spatial Reasoning!

How to play a 4 by 4 Skyscraper Puzzle:

• Build towers in each of the squares provided sized 1 through 4 tall
• Each row has skyscrapers of different heights (1 through 4), no duplicate sizes
• Each column has skyscrapers of different heights (1 through 4), no duplicate sizes
• The rules on the outside (in grey) tell you how many skyscrapers you can see from that direction
• The rules on the inside tell you which colour rod to use (W=White, R=Red, G=Green, P=Purple, Y=Yellow)
• Taller skyscrapers block your view of shorter ones

Below is an overhead shot of a completed 4 by 4 city block.  To help illustrate the different sizes. As you can see, since each relational rod is coloured based on its size, we can tell the sizes quite easily.  Notice that each row has exactly 1 of each size, and that each column has one of each size as well.

To understand how to complete each puzzle, take a look at each view so we can see how to arrange the rods:

If you are new to completing one of these puzzles, please take a look here for clearer instructions: Skyscraper Puzzles

Relational Rod Templates

Here are some templates for you to try these puzzles yourself and with your students:

4 x 4 Skyscraper Puzzles – for Relational Rods

5 x 5 Skyscraper Puzzles – for Relational Rods

A few thoughts about using these:

• How will you introduce these puzzles to your students?  Would you use the cube version I shared first? How much information about strategies and tips will you provide?  Will this allow for productive struggle, or will you attempt to remove as much of the struggle as possible?
• Would you use these as an activity you give all students, or something you provide to just some.  Why? (Something for students who finish early or something for everyone to try?)
• How would giving a puzzle to a pair of students be different than if you gave it to individuals?  Which were you assuming to do here?  What if you tried the other option?
• How might using Relational rods be different than paper-and-pencil or electronic versions? How might it be different than the version with cubes?
• How will you orchestrate a conversation for your class to help consolidate the learning here?
• What will you do if students give up quickly?  What questions / prompts will you provide?

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A belief I have: Teaching mathematics is much more than providing neat things for our students, it involves countless decisions on our part about how to effectively make the best use of the problem / activity.  Hopefully, this post has helped you consider your own decision making processes!

I’d love to hear how you and/or your students do!

The role of “practice” in mathematics class

A few weeks ago a NYTimes published an article titled, Make Your Daughter Practice Math. She’ll Thank You Later, an opinion piece that, basically, asserts that girls would benefit from “extra required practice”.  I took a few minutes to look through the comments (which there are over 600) and noticed a polarizing set of personal comments related to what has worked or hasn’t worked for each person, or their own children.  Some sharing how practicing was an essential component for making them/their kids successful at mathematics, and others discussing stories related to frustration, humiliation and the need for children to enjoy and be interested in the subject.

Instead of picking apart the article and sharing the various issues I have with it (like the notion of “extra practice” should be given based on gender), or simply stating my own opinions, I think it would be far more productive to consider why practice might be important and specifically consider some key elements of what might make practice beneficial to more students.

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To many, the term “practice” brings about childhood memories of completing pages of repeated random questions, or drills sheets where the same algorithm is used over and over again.  Students who successfully completed the first few questions typically had no issues completing each and every question.  For those who were successful, the belief is that the repetition helped.  For those who were less successful, the belief is that repeating an algorithm that didn’t make sense in the first place wasn’t helpful…  even if they can get an answer, they might still not understand (*Defining 2 opposing definitions of “understanding” here).

“Practice” for both of the views above is often thought of as rote tasks that are devoid of thinking, choices or sense making.  Before I share with you an alternative view of practice, I’d like to first consider how we have tackled “practice” for students who are developing as readers.

If we were to consider reading instruction for a moment, everyone would agree that it would be important to practice reading, however, most of us wouldn’t have thoughts of reading pages of random words on a page, we would likely think about picture books.  Books offer many important factors for young readers.  Pictures might help give clues to difficult words, the storyline offers interest and motivation to continue, and the messages within the book might bring about rich discussions related to the purpose of the book.  This kind of practice is both encourages students to continue reading, and helps them continue to get better at the same time.  However, this is very different from what we view as math “practice”.

In Dan Finkel’s Ted Talk (Five Principles of Extraordinary Math Teaching) he has attempted to help teachers and parents see the equivalent kind of practice for mathematics:

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Below is a chart explaining the role of practice as it relates to what Dan Finkel calls play:

Take a look at the “Process” row for a moment.  Here you can see the difference between a repetitive drill kind of practice and the “playful experiences” kind of  practice Dan had called for.  Let’s take a quick example of how practice can be playful.

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Students learning to add 2-digit numbers were asked to “practice” their understanding of addition by playing a game called “How Close to 100?”.  The rules:

• Roll 2 dice to create a 2-digit number (your choice of 41 or 14)
• Use base-10 materials as appropriate
• Try to get as close to 100 as possible
• 4th role you are allowed eliminating any 1 number IF you want

What choice would you make???  Some students might want to keep all 4 roles and use the 14 to get close to 100, while other students might take the 41 and try to eliminate one of the roles to see if they can get closer.

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When practice involves active thinking and reasoning, our students get the practice they need and the motivation to sustain learning!  When practice allows students to gain a deeper understanding (in this case the visual of the base-10 materials) or make connections between concepts, our students are doing more than passive rule following – they are engaging in thinking mathematically!

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In the end, we need to take greater care in making sure that the experiences we provide our students are aimed at the 5 strands shown below:

Adding It Up: Helping Children Learn Mathematics

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You might also be interested in thinking about how we might practice Geometrical terms/properties, or spatial reasoning, or exponents, or Bisectors…

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So I will leave you with some final thoughts:

• 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 topic 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?
• What does practice look like for your students outside of school?  Is there a place for practice at home?
• Which of the 5 strands (shown above) are regularly present in your “practice” activities?  Are there strands you would like to make sure are embedded more regularly?

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

The Importance of Contexts and Visuals

My wife Anne-Marie isn’t always impressed when I talk about mathematics, especially when I ask her to try something out for me, but on occasion I can get her to really think mathematically without her realizing how much math she is actually doing.  Here’s a quick story about one of those times, along with some considerations:

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A while back Anne-Marie and I were preparing lunch for our three children.  It was a cold wintery day, so they asked for Lipton Chicken Noodle Soup.  If you’ve ever made Lipton Soup before you would know that you add a package of soup mix into 4 cups of water.

Typically, my wife would grab the largest of our nesting measuring cups (the one marked 1 cup), filling it four times to get the total required 4 cups, however, on this particular day, the largest cup available was the 3/4 cup.

Here is how the conversation went:

Anne-Marie:  How many of these (3/4 cups) do I need to make 4 cups?

Me:  I don’t know.  How many do you think?  (attempting to give her time to think)

Anne-Marie:  Well… I know two would make a cup and a half… so… 4 of these would make 3 cups…

Me: OK…

Anne-Marie:  So, 5 would make 3 and 3/4 cups.

Me:  Mmhmm….

Anne-Marie:  So, I’d need a quarter cup more?

Me:  So, how much of that should you fill?  (pointing to the 3/4 cup in her hand)

Anne-Marie:  A quarter of it?  No, wait… I want a quarter of a cup, not a quarter of this…

Me:  Ok…

Anne-Marie:  Should I fill it 1/3 of the way?

Me:  Why do you think 1/3?

Anne-Marie:  Because this is 3/4s, and I only need 1 of the quarters.

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The example I shared above illustrates sense making of a difficult concept – division of fractions – a topic that to many is far from our ability of sense making.  My wife, however, quite easily made sense of the situation using her reasoning instead of a formula or an algorithm.  To many students, however, division of fractions is learned first through a set of procedures.

I have wondered for quite some time why so many classrooms start with procedures and algorithms unill I came across Liping Ma’s book Knowing and Teaching Mathematics.  In her book she shares what happened when she asked American and Chinese teachers these 2 problems:

Here were the results:

Now, keep in mind that the sample sizes for each group were relatively small (23 US teachers and 72 Chinese teachers were asked to complete two tasks), however, it does bring bring about a number of important questions:

• How does the training of American and Chinese teachers differ?
• Did both groups of teachers rely on the learning they had received as students, or learning they had received as teachers?
• What does it mean to “Understand” division of fractions?  Computing correctly?  Beging able to visually represent what is gonig on when fractions are divided? Being able to know when we are being asked to divide?  Being able to create our own division of fraction problems?
• What experiences do we need as teachers to understand this concept?  What experiences should we be providing our students?

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Visual Representations

In order to understand division of fractions, I believe we need to understand what is actually going on.  To do this, visuals are a necessity!  A few examples of visual representations could include:

A number line:

A volume model:

An area model:

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Starting with a Context

Starting with a context is about allowing our students to access a concept using what they already know (it is not about trying to make the math practical or show students when a concept might be used someday).  Starting with a context should be about inviting sense-making and thinking into the conversation before any algorithm or set of procedures are introduced.  I’ve already shared an example of a context (preparing soup) that could be used to launch a discussion about division of fractions, but now it’s your turn:

Design your own problem that others could use to launch a discussion of division of fractions.  Share your problem!  

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A few things to reflect on:

• How do you use contexts and visuals to help your students make sense of concepts?
• What does day 1 look like for any new concept in your classroom?
• How do you know if your students “understand” a topic?  How would you define “understanding“?
• How do you assess your students’ understanding?  How does this assessment help you know where to go next?
• How do we get better as teachers to understand the mathematics we teach?
• If you know that a specific concept is difficult for you to visually represent, where do you turn to continue your own learning?

As always, I’d love to hear your thoughts.  Leave a reply here on Twitter (@MarkChubb3)

How Many Do You See (Part 2 of 2)

A few weeks ago I shared with you a quick blog post showing a simple worksheet at the grade 2 level – the kind of  simple worksheet that is common to many classrooms.  If you haven’t seen the image, here it is again:

As you can see, the task asks students to correctly count the number of each shape they notice.  In my first post (Part 1) I asked us a few questions to start a conversation:

1. Pick one shape (or more if you’re adventurous)
2. Think about what you believe the teacher’s edition would say
3. Count how many you see
4. Share the 3 points above as a comment here or on Twitter

I was quite happy with where some of the conversations led…

Some of the conversations revolved around the issue many have with resources perpetuating stereotypical definitions of shapes:

If we look, there are exactly 4 shapes that resemble the diagram at the top of the page labelled as “rectangle”, however, there are several different sized squares as well (a square are a special case of a rectangle).

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Other conversations revolved around actually counting the number of each item:

What interests me here is that we, as a group of math teachers, have answered this grade 2 worksheet with various answers.  Which brings about 2 important conversations:

1. What are we looking for when students complete a worksheet or textbook questions?
2. Are we aiming for convergent or divergent thinking?  Which of these is more helpful for our students?

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What are we looking for?

Given the conversations I have had with math teachers about the worksheet being shared here, it seems like there are a few different beliefs.  Some teachers believe the activity is aimed at helping students recognize traditional shapes and identify them on the page.  Other teachers believe that this activity could potentially lead to discussions about definitions of shapes (i.e., What is a rectangle?  What is a hexagon?…) if we listen to and notice our students’ thinking about each of the shapes, then bring students together to have rich discussions.

It’s probably worth noting that the Teacher’s Edition for this worksheet includes precise answers.  If a typical teacher were to collect the students’ work and begin marking the assignment using the “answers” from the teacher’s guide, some of the students would have the “correct” answer of 8 trapezoids, but many others would likely have noticed several of the other trapezoids on the page.  If we are looking / listening for students to find the correct answer, we are likely missing out on any opportunity to learn about our students, or offer any opportunity for our students to learn themselves!

I would hope that an activity like this would provide us opportunities for our students to show what they understand, and move beyond getting answers into the territory of developing mathematical reasoning.

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Convergent vs Divergent Thinking

Again, many of the teachers I have discussed this activity with have shared their interest in finding the other possible versions of each shape.  However, what we would actually do with this activity seems to be quite different for each educator.  It seems like the decisions different teachers might be making here relate to their interest in students either having convergent thinking, or divergent thinking.  Let’s take a look at a few possible scenarios:

Teacher 1:

Before students start working on the activity, the teacher explains that their job is to find shapes that look exactly like the image in the picture at the top of the page.

Teacher 2:

Before students start working on the activity, the teacher tells the students exactly how many of each shape they found, then asks students to find them.

Teacher 3:

Before students start working on the activity, the teacher explains that their job is to find as many shapes as possible.  Then further explains that there might be ones that are not traditional looking.  Then, together with students, defines criteria for each shape they are about to look for.

Teacher 4:

Before students start working on the activity, the teacher explains that their job is to find as many shapes as possible.  As students are working, they challenge students to continue to think about other possibilities.

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In the above scenarios, the teachers’ goals are quite different.  Teacher 1 expects their students to spend time looking at common versions of each shape, then spot them on the page.  Teacher 2’s aim is for students to be able to think deeper about what each shape really means, hoping that they are curious about where the rest of the shapes could possibly be leading their students to challenge themselves.  Teacher 3 believes that in order for students to be successful here, that they need to provide all of the potential pieces before their students get started.  Their goal in the end is for students to use the definitions they create together in the activity.  Finally, teacher 4’s goal is for students to access the mathematics before any terms or definitions are shared.  They believe that they can continue to push students to think by using effective questioning.  The development of reasoning is this teacher’s goal.

Looking back at these 4 teachers’ goals, I notice that 2 basic things differ:

1. How much scaffolding is provided; and
2. When scaffolding is provided

Teachers that provide lots of scaffolding prior to a problem typically aim for students to have convergent thinking.  They provide definitions and prompts, they model and tell, they hope that everyone will be able to get the same answers.

Teachers that withhold scaffolding and expect students to do more of the thinking along the way typically aim for divergent thinking.  That is, they hope that students will have different ideas in the hopes for students to share their thinking to create more thinking in others.

Whether you believe that convergent thinking or divergent thinking is best in math, I would really like you to consider how tasks that promote divergent thinking can actually help the group come to a consensus in the end.  If I were to provide this lesson to grade 2s, I would be aiming for students to be thinking as much as possible, to push students to continue to think outside-the-box as much as possible, then make sure that in my lesson close, that we ALL understood what makes a shape a shape.

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I want to leave you with a few reflective questions:

• I provided you with a specific worksheet from a specific grade, however, I want you to now think about what you teach.  How much scaffolding do you provide?  Are you providing too much too soon?
• Do your lessons start off with convergent thinking or divergent thinking?  Why do you do this?  Is this because you believe it is best?
• How can you delay scaffolding and convergent thinking so that we are actually promoting our students to be actively thinking?  How can you make this a priority?
• What lesson or warm-ups or problems have you given that are examples of what we are talking about here?
• If we do remove some of the scaffolding will some of your students sit there not learning?  Is this a sign of them not understanding the math, or a sign of them used to being spoon-fed thinking?  What do WE need to get better at if we are to delay some of this scaffolding?

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I encourage you to continue to think about what it means to help set up situations for your students to actively construct understanding:

• A Few Simple Beliefs
• Learning Goals, Success Criteria….. And Creativity?
• Never Forget the Closing of a Lesson!
• How do we meet the needs of so many unique students in a mixed-ability classroom?
• Differentiated Instruction: comparing 2 subjects

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

P.S.  I’m still not confident how many of each shape are actually here!

“Worst Problem Ever!”

A few years ago I was teaching a 6/7 split class.  We had been exploring surface area and volume of prisms (rectangular so far), but were quite early on in the learning cycle.  At the beginning of my math class I drew a picture of a rectangular prism and wrote the dimensions on the diagram like below:

I asked everyone to calculate the Surface Area.  Really this was just a check for me to see if we understood surface area… the problem for the day was coming up.

However, as I walked around, I realized something VERY unusual.  EVERYONE got the answer of 250… but not everyone did it correctly.  Let me show you:

 

Take a look at the 2 answers above.  Some students calculated the Surface Area correctly at 250 units squared… and others calculated 250 units cubed (they found the volume).

I apologized to the class for giving them the worst problem ever… THE ONLY POSSIBLE rectangular prism that has the same surface area as volume.  Then one student commented, “Is that the only possible prism?”  

I didn’t know the answer, so we started seeing if it was the only possible prism.

Over the next 100 minutes, every student in the class, some in pairs, some on their own, started drawing prisms and calculating the surface area and volume.

Eventually, a student told me that one of the dimensions couldn’t possibly be a 1.  I asked him to prove it… After a few minutes he showed me several examples with numbers that were small or large.  He attempted to find the limits:

He explained to the class that if there is a 1 as any of the dimensions, the Surface Area would always be larger.   We explored why that happens.

Minutes later, another student told me that it was impossible to have a 2 as one of the dimensions.  I asked her to prove it… She showed me the work that she had completed and shared it with the class.

She explained that the numbers were getting close if she chose 2 of the numbers identical, but the end pieces of the shape would always add up to more than the volume would.

After lots of trial and error… guessing and refining ideas, several students started finding possible prisms that also had the same Surface Area and Volume…

The class started noticing a pattern between the dimensions and found limits between the smallest and largest possible prisms…  

By the end of class, all students had calculated dozens of surface areas and volumes… all students were making conjectures or testing out the conjectures of others.

My original problem, which I intended as a quick warm-up was not a quality engaging problem.  However, I want you to think about what made this lesson better?

WHO posed the problem that day?  Did this have something to do with the shared responsibilities that happened later in the lesson?

What if I just moved on?  would the learning have been as rich?

Think about how the students picked the shapes they were testing?  Some students worked in teams to work strategically… others made their own conjectures and followed those patterns.

In this lesson, choice was key, but the choices didn’t come from me… Students were working together to reach an ultimate goal, not in competition with each other…  Conjectures were made and tested, not because I told everyone to, but because it served our purpose!

I think about Dan Meyer’s “Real World vs Real Work” a lot.  Why were my students so engaged here?  There was NO real world connection.  That wasn’t what was motivating my students at all!

I also think we need to reflect on the level of cognitive demand we ask our students to be engaged in:

“Doing Mathematics Tasks” seems like something that is hard to do, yet, every one of my students were engaged in this problem… everyone eagerly searched for patterns, many drew pictures, used snap cubes, visualized what was happening… all in the name of better understanding the relationships between the dimensions of a rectangular prism, and its surface area and volume!

By the end of the class, my students had found exactly 10 rectangular prisms that have the same value of its surface area as its volume (using only whole numbers), and could prove that these were the only 10 possible.

I’d love to hear your thoughts about our problem… or why the students were SO engaged… or about the conditions that must have been present in the class… or how problem solving can be used as a purposeful practice of procedures…..