One thing I find incredibly cool is that through Substack I get to engage with folks designing the curriculum I am using with my students. And get to have a window into how much they care and how much thought they put into this. And then get to comment and sometimes even get a reply – super cool!
Here’s a thought-provoking article by Dan Meyer, “Authentic Tasks Have Failed Us”: https://danmeyer.substack.com/p/authentic-tasks-have-failed-us
I’m only writing this as a blog post because Substack wouldn’t copy/paste my list below properly (I started writing in a word processor because I knew my response was going to be long).
Eleven thoughts (please note the numbering is somewhat arbitrary):
- I love the sheep lesson on inequalities. And I love how one of my students in his description said that the sheep “spawns,” using video game terminology.
- Right there with you on the cringe-worthiness of using “authentic audience” in a definition of “authentic.”
- At first I thought, okay, you’re being too hard on the writers of the Math Lesson Planning Handbook.
- But then I went and looked it up, and I have to agree, their definition of authentic/interesting does contradict itself and should be revised.
- Though you have to give it to them that the map of Dory’s travels and the candy bars question are (at least slight) improvements over the first examples given, although,
- a lot depends still, as you say, on the invitation and the manner in which student thinking is considered and shared.
- At least the Math Lesson Planning Handbook does talk about worthwhile tasks as being “rich” although the John Mason quote you shared helps clarify that it’s not the task itself, it’s the ways of thinking. I guess this is what the Handbook authors are getting at with higher-order thinking or “high-cognitive demand task.” They sort of sandwich together the task and the thinking the task is likely to invite.
- I read the link you gave, and I like this quote, “Being open to simply make things work as best as possible for the conditions at the time is a far less stressful place to be – I can only talk for myself here because I know this isn’t how everyone feels about it.”
- I’m grateful that the Desmos curriculum allows for a lot of this flexibility – I can start with notes, or start with the lesson, assign a Try This right after the notes, or for homework, or give practice problems.
- I’m teaching two different sections of Algebra 1 with Desmos currently, and I do different things with my second class both based on how things went with class one and also how I’m reading class two.
- I like to share some things I think are cool, like with the Math Stories, I shared a great video by Vonnegut called the Shape of Stories. But I decided not to show it to the second class, I think based on the energy in the room.
- This quote reminds me a bit of I think something Lockhart? wrote, maybe in Mathematician’s Lament?, about how it takes a lot of knowledge and a tremendous amount of work to flow with where the kids are – and I think that’s true without a good curriculum. But I think it’s possible to flow with where the kids are without tremendous amounts of work outside of school – just a lot of presence in the classroom (and a prep period that isn’t devoured by hall duty and IEP meetings) – with a curriculum like Desmos/Amplify.
- Loved the teacher’s response to the student saying x>-octillion.
- One of my students in Pumpkin Prices put in .000000000000001 for the weight of the pumpkin, which I had never thought of doing (and they got a negative price! funny programming fluke?) so we joked about the farmer paying people to take these pumpkins off their property. Anyhow, I love it when students test the extremes – mathematically, not behaviorally. Also, I love the animation adjusting to show these really tiny or really huge pumpkins to delight students (and their teacher) who are drawn to test the mathematical extremes. Thanks for helping create it!
- I really liked the upcoming lesson previews – not getting them any more (maybe I unsubscribed by accident?). Got to figure out how to get those again!