Today was a fabulous day of professional development offered by my district around math instruction. So much great learning around differentiation, math talk and formative assessment influencing thoughtful math instruction in the classroom. As was absorbing lots of new ideas and thinking, I was reminded of a book I began utilizing really heavily last school year. The book I am thinking of is "Good Questions: Great Ways to Differentiate Math Instruction", written by Marian Small. This was recommended to me by a trusted colleague and I have to say it is my favorite resource in planning my math lessons. The focus of this book is on two easy to implement and extremely effective ways teachers can differentiate mathematics to meet the needs of their students in the classroom; through
open questioning and through
parallel tasks. The first chapter or two of this book defines open questioning and parallel tasks for the reader and also outlines how teachers might create their own questions and tasks that inherently differentiated for the needs of learners. If you look at the 2nd Edition, the final 3/4 or more of the book is aligned to the Common Core State Standards and gives both primary and intermediate examples of open questions and parallel tasks that can be used in the classroom.
What are open questions and parallel tasks? I need more information...
- Open Questioning: Open questioning is about asking broad questions that provide opportunities and access points for students at many developmental level to think about mathematics through a variety of approaches and responses.
- Parallel Tasks: Parallel Tasks are sets of related task that look at the same big idea, but are designed to meet the needs of students at differing developmental levels and that lend themselves to discussions around strategy and thinking.
- Additional Information and Resources:
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