Thanks for visiting my blog and checking out what I have to say about mathematics. I hope you find this post especially useful, because I know when I learned about open and parallel tasks this week, mathematics opened up for me.
Open & Parallel Tasks - What's That?
This is the exact question I asked myself when I heard these terms.
Open tasks allow for a broad range of responses at many levels. This entices students from all levels of mathematics to participate, according to Marian Small's presentation DifferentiatingInstruction in Math: It's Not as Hard as You Think. Open tasks broaden everyone's learning and makes students feel like their contributions make a difference, which in turn boosts confidence.
My instructor also provided some strategies to create open tasks.
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| McEachren, P. (2018, Sept. 17). Strategies and Examples for Open Tasks. [Chart]. |
Parallel tasks are activities given to children where they have the choice between two tasks that "focus on the same key concept, yet address students at different levels of mathematical sophistication" as The Literacy and Numeracy Secretariat put it in their monograph Differentiating Mathematics Instruction. However, they are designed so that a whole range of students can participate in a discussion about them, regardless of the task chosen.
Both open and parallel tasks should encourage students to think mathematically and not just rely on procedures and algorithms.
Importance of Questions
One of the important things to do as a teacher while students are working or about to begin working on an open or parallel task is questions. There are two types: generic and scaffolded. Generic questions can be asked of both tasks, and aim to address the big idea at hand. Scaffolded questions are more specific to which task the student chose and acts as a support to get the student started. Scaffolded questions allow the teacher to "be less helpful" in that it gradually releases responsibility from the teacher to the student in finding the answer on his/her own and working independently successfully.
Why Differentiate in Mathematics?
This answer to this question may seem obvious to you, but I'm writing this part of the post for those who believe math is understood through memorization of algorithms. This is nonsense! Everyone learns differently, simply because we're all different beings.
A lot of the skills learned in mathematics, such as reflecting, communicating and reasoning are valuable skills used in everyday life. In order for all our students to become proficient in these skills, they need to learn them in contexts that make sense to them and are meaningful to them. Differentiating instructions provides those contexts for optimal learning for ALL students.
Resources for Teachers
The Ontario Teachers' Federation has a resource bank full of mathematics lesson plans, which incorporate open and parallel tasks at various levels.
This presentation Differentiating Instruction in Mathematics: It's Not as Hard as You Think by Marian Small has a lot of examples of open and parallel tasks.
Pun of the Post:
If Gotham was a mathematical city, where would all the bad guys go? To the prism!
(Special thanks to one of my students for sharing this joke with me)
(Special thanks to one of my students for sharing this joke with me)
Hey Alexandra!
ReplyDeleteSome amazing stuff you have here! You explained Parallel tasks well and kept your post engaging and entertaining! Also really appreciate your resources you included to your post and the pun of the post is always a nice relaxing benafactor!
-Great stuff!
Great post Alexandra! I really liked your points about effective questioning. I think as educators this is a very difficult concept. We want to help our students, but sometimes we help them too much! I like the idea of scaffolding questions - we can give our students just enough to get them going, but then we must realize the importance of backing away. In this way, students will become more and more independent. I think it's especially important to incorporate open questions, as opposed to yes and no responses. Open questions give students time to reflect, instead of just jumping to a one word answer.
ReplyDeleteHey Alexandra, I really like how you highlighted the importance of differentiating in math. It is important to know that not all students are the same and as such we can't expect them all to learn the same way. It can be very difficult for some students to jump right into the algorithm before they even understand the concepts in a different way. Giving students parallel tasks is a great way to have them work at their own pace, but have them all working on the concept.
ReplyDeleteHey Alexandra! Firstly, hilarious pun and secondly great post! I think you touched on all the important aspects of this week from differentiation and parallel tasks to important questions. I liked how you made the connection from math skills to everyday life skills and think this would be beneficial for our students to realize as well. Once again, great post!
ReplyDelete