It happened again.  Remember when I struggled on this blog somewhere last year with the idea that I don’t tell all the parts of a story and then forget about it or time passes and I don’t tell any of it?  Well, boo–this is another time of the year when so much is happening and I haven’t been telling some of our stories because there are so many pieces.  This ends now! 🙂  Very slowly….with day 1 of a new project today and then hopefully all the parts of a few other stories soon.  Hopefully. LOL

So anyway…at a professional development meeting I was in yesterday, I learned about 3-Act Math Tasks and knew I wanted to give them a try.   I am all about productive struggle, giving kids meaningful, motivating math tasks, and using contexts that are relevant to our mathematical community.  These seemed right up our alley!

As you read in the explanation, these tasks start with a video or picture that invites wonder and questioning.  There are very few words and kiddos can go in a variety of directions as they engage with the visual.

Our 1st Act started with this picture, which I found on Twitter and comes via @MrsHessClass and @MrsAclass_Rm214 (thanks, by the way!).  It connects BEAUTIFULLY with what’s going on in our room this year. 🙂

As we started our work, I gave kids a chance to study the picture and then talk with their partner about what they noticed and what they wonder.  We shared out and gathered these questions:

Once we had an idea about where we might go, partners were invited to choose a question they thought they could answer and have a go.  They could choose any on they wanted to (to start with) but they needed to be sure to show their thinking and convince their classmates that their answers are correct.  We reread our chart to remind us of what that meant:

Then we got busy with our first drafts of work.  As they got their paper and got started, I gave each partnership a copy of the picture in case they wanted to use it in their work.

We will continue our work tomorrow, but Day 1 of Act 2 (where kiddos work to find a solution) went fairly well and EVERYONE was engaged.

I caught a little bit of Josh, Jack and Chase’s thinking here:

And while we’ll come back to our posters and revise our work tomorrow, we’re off to a pretty good start:

Can’t wait to share our next steps later this week!

One more thing…what would YOU wonder about the picture?  Here it is again:

Please share your questions in our comments! We’d love to try out your wonderings!!