Promoting curiosity and developing resilience with NRICH tasks
This workshop will share some recent NRICH tasks which are designed to pique students' curiosity. By working on the problems together, we will explore strategies that can be used in the classroom to help your students become resilient problem solvers who can rise to the challenge when faced with being stuck. The problems will mainly cover material from the KS4 curriculum.
First activity
Try the problem below. As you work on the problem, consider the following metacognitive questions: 1) What strategies do I use to get started on a problem I haven't seen before?
2) What strategies do I use when I get to a dead end or don't know what to do next?
3) What strategies do I use to help my students when I see that they are stuck?
Being stuck is a "noble state". It is a mathematician's default state.
Here are the strategies we use when we are stuck:
Rather than using a generic poster with hints on what to do when we are stuck, try creating a set of suggestions WITH your students, so they have some investment and ownership of the ideas.
Students need to be Resourceful and Resilient in order to be effective problem solvers.
NRICH problems designed to develop resilience: Methods of scaffolding to develop resilience - card sorts, hint cards, multiple approaches, fill in the gaps...
In the triangle below, each side is divided into thirds. Three of the points are joined to create a new triangle. What proportion of the original triangle is shaded?
What scaffolding could you use to help your students access this task?
What is the thinking that you think the students must do for themselves?
What's non-negotiable? Where do we draw the line?
Does working in this way give students the sense of achievement we want them to feel?
Are students who are offered this type of scaffolding likely to "hang on in there" for longer than they otherwise would?
Is this likely to transfer to problems where students aren't offered such scaffolding?