This last week I had the privilege of being a facilitator for several different groups of teachers who were interested in increasing their mathematics content knowledge and exploring effective mathematics instructional practices. One of these opportunities was as a facilitator for the Building Mathematics Leadership (BML) Across Oregon training workshops. These workshops were held in Ashland, Salem and a third one is scheduled for the Pendleton area next week. This series of workshops is co-sponsored by Oregon Department of Education and Oregon Council of Teachers of Mathematics’ Professional Development Cadre. There will be two more of the BML series of workshops in February and March. The BML link above includes registration information. Saturday found me in the Education Building at Portland State University teaching the final face-to-face session for a PrISM Oregon course called Deepening Algebraic Reasoning in the Elementary Classroom.
In both the BML and PSU PrISM sessions a question came up about how to better promote mathematical problem solving in schools. During the BML session in Salem a teacher shared how she was using some of the tasks we’d shared at previous sessions with all the teachers at her grade level. These grade level teachers jointly created a bulletin board they were using to display student responses. They were pleased with the amount of interest and discussion this board was generating with their students. I also shared an idea. In the late 90′s a couple of my sisters and I were all teaching at the same elementary school in Gresham. We decided to create a Math Problem Solving Contest schoolwide. Each month we would post a new problem. The principal would include the tasks in the weekly newsletter that was sent home to parents. Students submitted their solutions to any one of us. Students who had solutions that worked were given small prizes (free popcorn at lunch, a coupon to the student store for a pencil, a special bookmark, etc.) At the end of the year, all students who participated in the contest got to participate in a Math Celebration. (It was similar to a field day except all events had a math component.) Washington State Mathematics Council’s Everything in Its Proper Place “Apples: Part 1 and Part 2“, Noyce Foundation’s “Problems of the Month, and PDC’s Penny’s Ancestors Math Lesson Design are examples of tasks students solved in these contests. Any of the Teacher to Teacher Problem Solving Tasks would also work well. What do you do to promote problem solving in your school? We’d love to hear from you.