Rich Tasks
Rich tasks offer instructional opportunities to engage each and every student in cognitively demanding processes. The beauty of a rich task is that it has a low floor, high ceiling and wide walls. This means that it is universally designed to optimize access for each and every learner. Below are just some of our favorites ones you might start exploring. Please let us know if there are others to add to our list!
Not all tasks are created equal! We encourage you and your professional learning teams to use the levels of cognitive demand (Smith et al., 2000) to vet tasks so that you are working with high level demanding tasks that promote procedures with connections and doing mathematics. High level demand tasks that focus on procedures with connections: a) use procedure for deeper understanding of concepts • b) focus on broad procedures connected to ideas instead narrow algorithms • c) usually are represented in different ways • d) require some degree of cognitive effort; procedures may be used but not mindlessly. High level demand tasks that focus on doing mathematics: a) require complex non‐algorithmic thinking • b) require students to explore and understand the mathematics • c) demand self‐monitoring of one’s cognitive process • d) require considerable cognitive effort and may involve some level of anxiety b/c solution path isn’t clear
Not all tasks are created equal-
Not all tasks provide the same opportunities for student thinking and learning (Hiebert et al. 1997; Stein et al. 2000). • Student learning is greatest in classrooms where the tasks consistently encourage high‐level student thinking and reasoning and least in classrooms where the tasks are routinely procedural in nature (Boaler and Staples 2009; Hieber and Wearne 1993; Stein and Lane 1996)
References
Stein, M. K., Smith, M. S. , Henningsen, M. A. & E. Silver, E. (2000).Implementing standards- based mathematics instruction: A casebook for professional development. New York: Teachers College Press.
