ED1635 Lecture 5: Open ended and Close Ended Tasks Primary Mathematics
Mathematics - Tutorial 1 - Week 1
Open Ended and Closed Ended Tasks
Characteristics of good questions
- Require more than remembering a fact or reproducing a skill
- Students can learn from answering the questions; teachers can learn about the students
- May be several acceptable answers.
Why open ended questions?
- Open ended tasks:
are often thought of as tasks for which more than a single correct solution is possible
offer students the chance to explore different strategic approaches to achieving a solution
enable students to show what they know rather than what they don’t know
are about developing thinking, reasoning and communicating
enable students to participate more actively in lessons and express their ideas more frequently
Enables teacher to tell who are the brighter children in the class - Another form of assessment
Children who are less able at maths, are more interested in open ended tasks
What open ended tasks shouldn't be
- Lacking in mathematical content
- A chance for you to sit back and just watch, you need to be amongst the activity to hear and ‘see’ the
thinking
- Unstructured or lacking in direction, both you and the students should understand the purpose.
Making Questions Open Ended
- Working backwards
- Identify a mathematical topic or concept
- Think of a closed question and write down the answer.
- Make up a new question that includes (or addresses) the answer.
- Adapting a standard question
- Identify a mathematical topic or concept.
- Think of a standard question
- Adapt it to make an open ended question
Building open ended tasks into a lesson
- it is important to plan two further questions/prompts
For those children who are unable to start working (enabling prompts).
For those children who finish quickly (extending prompts)
High Quality Response
- Examples of evidence of a high quality response includes those that:
- Are systematic (e.g. may record responses in a table or pattern).
- If the solutions are finite, all solutions are found
- If patterns can be found, then they are evident in the response.
- Where a student has challenged themselves and shown complex examples which satisfy the constraints.
- Make connections to other content area
Week One Readings
Chapter One - Understanding School Mathematics - Page 2-12
- Teacher quality is clearly related to teacher knowledge and confidence
- “Mathematics is viewed as a social-cultural practice, a product of reflective human activity”
find more resources at oneclass.com
find more resources at oneclass.com
Document Summary
Require more than remembering a fact or reproducing a skill. Students can learn from answering the questions; teachers can learn about the students. Enables teacher to tell who are the brighter children in the class - another form of assessment. Children who are less able at maths, are more interested in open ended tasks. A chance for you to sit back and just watch, you need to be amongst the activity to hear and see" the thinking. Unstructured or lacking in direction, both you and the students should understand the purpose. Think of a closed question and write down the answer. Make up a new question that includes (or addresses) the answer. Adapt it to make an open ended question. It is important to plan two further questions/prompts. For those children who are unable to start working (enabling prompts). For those children who finish quickly (extending prompts) Examples of evidence of a high quality response includes those that:
