The other day I had one of the best days I’ve had in a long time out in the schools.  After watching Dan Meyer’s webinar about the 3 Act Math Tasks and then reading everything I could on Dan’s blog as well as many others, I created two of my own 3 Act Math Tasks. I tested them out yesterday plus I also used Graham Fletcher’s Lil’ Sister task.  Here is the breakdown of what I did.

 

5th Grade 3 Act Math Task: Cheese Balls

(This was my favorite!!!  I did this with 5th/6th combo class but would love to try it with 4th grade.  I thought of this idea as I was making these lovely Cheese Ball Carrots for my son’s Kindergarten class and thought “How many Cheese Balls is this going to take?  Will I have enough in this container to make all the carrots I need?”  So I thought I’d pose the picture to students and see if they came up with similar questions.)

cheese balls act I

What is the first question that comes to mind?

Gotta say I LOVE the 3 Act Handout…it really helped the kids organize their thoughts throughout the task.  After I listed all the questions kids had up on the board I told them that we would try to answer all their questions throughout the task, but for right now I wanted them to answer this question:

How many cheese balls did it take to fill up all these carrots?

cheese balls act II

After having them fill out the section in the 3 Act Math Handout about What Information Do You Need? and having them estimate how many cheese balls they thought it took, I showed them these two pictures and let them go about solving the problem:

cheese balls act III

After they all had taken the 24 bags x 26 in each bag, every kid in that room was so confident and proud that they had gotten the answer of 624, however…

FYI, when I made these carrots I just grabbed two handfuls and placed them into the bag…I did not count them.  The kids quickly came up with the idea that I had not placed the same amount into each bag, so I gave them some time to adjust their answer and then gave them the big reveal picture (which I had printed off for them) and let them figure out how many Cheese Balls I used:

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1st Grade 3 Act Math Task: Lil’ Sis

(Graham has this posted as Kindergarten on his site, but it was difficult even for a couple of the 1st graders…if we would have had more time I would have let the kids create the stacks of unifix cubes for the height of each girl so they would have the concrete piece to help them out, not just trying to use the pictures.  I had to go off to another lesson but the 1st grade teacher and I talked about her extending the activity by creating Big Sister’s height in cubes and then each kid creating their height in cubes and comparing their height to Big Sis.)

Here is the picture from Act I…click on it to visit’s Graham site for the whole task, better to see it straight from him than me retell it.

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4th Grade 3 Act Math Task: Fraction Fun

(the picture for this task came from a video off The Teaching Channel.  The lesson in the video is a 5th/6th combo class but the standards listed with the video are 3rd grade Common Core standards…so I guess it could be used anywhere in that range.  Personally, I used this picture with a 3rd/4th combo class.)

fraction fun act I

This task went pretty good with the kids, but I am almost certain I shouldn’t call it a 3 Act Math Task…mainly because I couldn’t decide what to do for Act II and III…any ideas?  I did pose the picture to the kids to see what questions they came up with and the kids decided what information/resources they needed (act II) and I had a couple groups of students come up and reveal (act III) how they covered the shape with other shapes….but not sure that makes it a 3 act task????  I am just starting with this journey, so any advice is greatly appreciated.

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