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To go back to the introduction to
this series of professional development activities, click
here
What makes a task rich?
To help to answer this question we suggest that you try some
unfamiliar problems yourself. In this activity you are first asked
to spend some time working on a problem, ideally with a colleague,
before trying to identify what we mean by a 'rich' task and what
would make doing the particular problem you have studied a 'rich'
activity for your pupils.
You will need the following resources:
*You will need to save the zipped
folder to your computer, then right-click on the zip folder and
"extract" the files. Inside the folder "Eggsinbaskets" is a Word
document. The Word document contains links to the video-clips.
What to do:
- Try one of the suggested problems on your own or with another
colleague.
- Look at the short list of attributes of a rich task described
in Rich tasks.doc .
Discuss how they link to your own experiences when solving the
problem.
- Use the blank template (RichTaskTemplate.doc ),
which lists the attributes of a rich task, to make your own notes
about why the problem you have worked on could be described as a
rich task. Remember that a rich task does not have to have all the
attributes and much will depend on how it is used in the
classroom.
-
Join with other colleagues and compare your template with
theirs.
-
You might like to finish by looking at the completed template for the problem you
tried (RichTaskTemplateEggsinBaskets.doc in EggsinBaskets.zip or
RichTaskTemplateGotIt.doc
). These represent our own experiences of using the tasks in
classrooms so they may look diffferent to your own. There are of
course many answers. It would also be worth looking at
the notes section of the problem on the website (
Eggs in Baskets notes or
Got It notes).
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