Educational Leadership - October 2017

it is meant to be the hook that gets students invested in the problem. This is also where students identify the question they’d like to explore. Once they have a question to answer, the teacher moves to Act 2, which requires students to gather information and decide what information they need to answer their question. Act 2 also involves students actively working toward a solution in small groups (the bulk of the work during the task).

Act 3 is when students present their findings to the class, often showcasing multiple solutions and strategies. Students argue their points and critique the reasoning of others. In the end, the teacher shows a final video or image that definitively answers the question and provides a satisfying resolution to the problem.

To understand the power of three-act tasks, it’s helpful to see how they unfold in the classroom. The following vignette is from an elementary school where I have been working as a consultant and professional learning provider. The purpose of this visit was to engage the students in a three-act task I created so teachers could observe how these tasks unfold with students. As you read, I encourage you to reflect on the following questions: What is the role of the students? What is the role of the teacher? How does this experience differ from a classroom where students are given worksheets with division problems?

The Money Roll
Act 1

I was invited to work with K– 8 stu-
dents on problem-based learning
tasks in a school district in western
Massachusetts. One day, I set out a
three-act task for a group of 21 4th
graders. For Act 1, I played a short
video that showed me holding a roll
of bills (fig. 1) before I stepped back
and unrolled the bills across the floor
in one long line (fig. 2). (View the
video and all other media for this task
at http://mathleadership.org/1618-2.)

I then stopped the video and asked the students what they noticed and recorded their responses on chart paper.

JESSIE: You had a lot of money.

TEACHER: What makes you say that?

JESSIE: When it was all rolled up, it looked like a lot.

EFRAN: Yeah, and it rolled across the whole floor.

TEACHER: What else did you notice?

KIARA: They looked like dollars.

QUINN: I think there are different
kinds like one dollar, five dollars . . .
TEACHER: So, there might be other
kinds of bills besides one-dollar bills?

QUINN: Yeah, because you can’t see them all when they’re rolled up.

I then asked the students to share questions they had about the video and recorded their responses on another piece of chart paper.

KADE: How much money is there?

MIKAL: How long is it [the whole roll of money]?

JESSIE: I wonder why you even did it?

TEACHER: It does seem strange, right?

JENNA: Is it your money?

D’MARION: How did you get them all to stick together?

KEISHA: How many dollars are there?

JESSIE: We already asked that.

TEACHER: I think that’s a similar question, but it seems like Keisha and Kade might be asking two different questions. Kade asked about how much money there is, and Keisha asked how many dollars are in the whole thing. How might these questions be different?