Teaching with Challenging Tasks and learning through problem solving
Some articles focussed on the pedagogy of teaching with challenging tasks are outlined below:
Spotlighting: Helping to scaffold the 'explore phase' when teaching with challenging tasks
Refining how to teach with challenging tasks: The role of preliminary experiences
An instructional model to support planning and teaching student centred structured inquiry lessons
Designing and scaffolding rich mathematical learning experiences with challenging tasks
Below are links to some Challenging Tasks and problem solving investigations, predominantly in number and algebra. These challenging tasks can be used as stand-alone problem solving activities, or taught in conjunction with the SURF framework.
Task Name: Basketball
Links to SURF: Various
Task Name: Cakes and Marbles
Links to SURF: Equals sign = (Reading); Equivalence (Understanding)
Task Name: The Trouble with Mum and Dad
Links to SURF: Various
Task Name: Mr Happy
Links to SURF: Exponential Growth (Understanding)
Task Name: Chickens and Cows
Links to SURF: Various
Task Name: Our epic Monopoly game
Links to SURF: Place Value (Understanding)
Task Name: The Lollipop Tree
Links to SURF: Triangular Numbers (Understanding)
Task Name: Gold coin problem
Links to SURF: Prime and Composite Numbers; Factors (Understanding);
Task Name: Peace at last and Five minutes peace
Links to SURF: Various
Task Name: Stained Glass Window Investigation
Links to SURF: Various.
Task Name: Cars in a garage; Matchsticks triangles
Links to SURF: Various.
Task Name: Superheroes
Links to SURF: Various.
Task Name: Shrek
Links to SURF: Various.
Task Name: We're Going on a Bear Hunt
Links to SURF: Various.
Task Name: Pop-It Problem Solving
Links to SURF: Various.
Task Name: Fairy Tales
Links to SURF: Various.
Task Name: Paper Folding Task, Fish Out of Water Investigation, Donuts and Cupcakes, Pocket Money Problem
Links to SURF: Exponential growth (Understanding).
Task Name: The Treehouse Series
Links to SURF: Proportional reasoning (Understanding), Estimating (Understanding), Decimals (Understanding), Multiplication (Understanding).
Task Name: The Old Couple
Links to SURF: Count Up (Strategies), Count Back (Strategies), Hop up (Strategies), Hop Back (Strategies), Compensate (Strategies)
Task Name: The Twits
Links to SURF: Proportional reasoning (Understanding), Estimating (Understanding), Decimals (Understanding), Multiplication (Understanding).
Task Name: Using movies to learn mathematics: Coin Operated, Up, Aladdin
Links to SURF: Proportional reasoning (Understanding), Estimating (Understanding), Place Value (Understanding)
Task Name: Vector and the shrink ray (here is a link to the relevant clip from the film Despicable Me)
Links to SURF: Proportional reasoning (Understanding).
Task Name: Lucky Dice and Lucky Dice Again
Links to SURF: Factors and Multiples (Understanding), Various skip-counting patterns (Fast Facts)/ Multiplicative Patterns/ Repeated Doubling (Understanding), Doubles (Fast Facts).
Task Name: Challenging tasks with Oliver Jeffers
Links to SURF: Various
Task Name: Extending the hundreds chart
Links to SURF: Negative numbers (understanding)
Task Name: Time elapsed task
Links to SURF: Hop Up (difference method for subtraction) (Strategies)
Task Name: My first day of school… on Jupiter!
Links to SURF: Place Value (Understanding)
Task Name: Mini Earth
Links to SURF: Various
Task Name: Esio Trot
Links to SURF: Focuses on various number patterns
Task Name: The Big Banana
Links to SURF: Various
Task Name: Delicious Donuts and Summer Time is Fly Time
Links to SURF: Conceptual Subitising (Fast Facts); Additional links to Skip-Counting, Multiplication and Addition Strategies.
Task Name: Experiments with counting patterns
Links to SURF: Skip-counting by 2's, 3's, 4’s, 5’s and 10’s (Fast Facts)
Task Name: Uluru
Links to SURF: Various
Task Name: Tidalick
Links to SURF: Various
Task Name: Trams
Links to SURF: Various
Task Name: Pancakes, pancakes
Links to SURF: Various
Task Name: MCG
Links to SURF: Various
Task Name: Ten Little Fingers and Ten Little Toes
Links to SURF: Various
Task Name: Mathematical proofs in primary schools (four different tasks)
Links to SURF: Odd and even numbers (Understanding); Commutative property - multiplication (Understanding); Distributive property of multiplication (Understanding)
Task Name: Room on a broom investigation
Links to SURF: Proportional reasoning/ Ratios (Understanding)
Task Name: Clocks
Links to SURF: Various
Task Name: Moon Man
Links to SURF: Various
Three Challenging Tasks: Equivalent Towers, Skip-Counting Patterns and Addition Shortcuts
Links to SURF: Various
Task Name: Fish Out Of Water Investigation (click here for the shorter version)
Links to SURF: Exponential growth (Understanding)
Task Name: Mr Men Math
Links to SURF: Various
Task Name: Harry Potter-Inspired Mathematics
Links to SURF: Various
Task Name: The Doorbell Rang
Links to SURF: Division (Reading); Division and multiplication (Understanding)
Task Name: Doubling Donut Tree
Links to SURF: Doubles (Fast Facts); Exponential growth (Understanding)
This article also outlines a 7-step process for developing challenging tasks.
Task Name: One Fish, Two Fish, Red Fish, Blue Fish
Links to SURF: Various
Task Name: The Smarties-Box challenge: Supporting systematic approaches to problem solving
Links to SURF: Estimation (Understanding), Multiplication (Understanding)
Task Name: Problem solving with The Sneetches
Links to SURF: Various
Task Name: The Big (Not So) Friendly Giant
Links to SURF: Doubles (Fast Facts), Repeated Doubles (Understanding)
Task Name: Who sank the boat? (see second half of linked article)
Links to SURF: Equals sign, = (Reading); Greater than/ less than signs, < > (Reading).
Task Name: Baskets and Boundaries
Links to SURF: More than one way (Understanding); Skip-counting by 2's, 3's, 4's and 6's (Fast Facts).
Task Name: How many feet? How many fingers?
Links to SURF: Skip counting by 2's, 5's, 10's (Fast Facts); More than one way (Understanding)
Task Name: Donut Investigation
Links to SURF: Doubles (Fast Facts); Exponential Growth/ Repeated Doubling (Understanding)
Task Name: When a quarter is not quite a quarter
Links to SURF: Precision (Understanding); Estimation (Understanding)
Task Name: Hopping with Fiona the Frog
Links to SURF: Counting Forwards (Fast Facts); Counting Backwards (Fasts Facts); Skip-counting by 2's and 3's (Fast Facts)