In our August newsletter, we introduced some ideas from Marion Small's book, Good Questions: Great Ways to Differentiate Mathematics Instruction, (2009) NCTM. We also shared some open and parallel tasks at Kindergarten through Grade 2. In this newsletter, we briefly review key concepts on differentiating with open and parallel tasks and share some examples for Grades 3-5.
A powerful strategy for differentiating the curriculum is to develop a single question or task that is open enough to allow all students to approach it by using different processes or strategies. Students benefit from working on such a task despite being at various stages of mathematical development. Marion Small targets the challenge of developing questions and tasks for classrooms in which the range of abilities is quite varied and complex. She proposes targeting big ideas for each strand of mathematics and then using Open and Parallel tasks that focus those big mathematical ideas as a way to better meet the needs of all students in a classroom.
Teacher to Teacher’s Making Sense of Problem Solving K-8 program is built around the big ideas presented in the National Council of Teachers of Mathematics Curriculum Focal Points. Our belief in the importance of differentiation has led to the structure of our units. Each unit begins with Warm Ups that introduce or reinforce concepts the students will need in order to fully engage in the problem solving task. Then students solve the more demanding main task. Finally, we offer one or more Extensions to challenge the thinking of students who are ready to go beyond the math concepts embedded in the basic problem solving task.
As a gift to our community of learners, we have applied the ideas from Ms. Small’s book to expand some of the Making Sense of Problem Solving tasks by sharing related open and parallel tasks. This newsletter links to open and parallel tasks that are based on problems published in the “Developing a Problem Solving Environment” Chapter of Making Sense of Problem Solving for Levels D/Grade 3 through Level F/Grade 5. Watch for a future newsletter with links to additional open and parallel tasks for Grades 6 to 8.
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Open Tasks:
“A task is open when it is framed in such a way that a variety of responses or approaches are possible.” Small, Marion. (2009) Good Questions: Great Ways to Differentiate Mathematics Instruction, p.6
Parallel Tasks:
“Sets of tasks, usually two or three, that are designed to meet the needs of students at different developmental levels, but that get at the same big idea and are close enough in context that they can be discussed simultaneously.” Small, Marion. (2009) p.10
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