Task 1: Ms. Hogan-Stedman has four cats: Ketchup, Mustard, Relish, and Daisy. Ketchup weighs 13 pounds. Mustard weighs 11 pounds. Relish weighs 12.2 pounds. Daisy weighs 19.5 pounds. How does Daisy’s weight affect the mean weight of the four cats?
Task 2: On a recent quiz, students in Mr. Luna’s class earned the following scores: 20, 20, 25, 29, and 26. If every student earned the same score on the quiz, what score would they earn?
Task 3: Students read the following number of pages over the weekend: 42, 54, 32, 38, 45, 43, 32, 50, 53, and 98. Ms. H-S calculated the mean, median, and mode of the number of pages students read over the weekend. The mode is 32 pages, the median is 44 pages, and the mean is 48.7 pages. Which measure of center is misleading?
Source: These tasks that were shared by Megan Hogan from Concord, MA Public Schools can be found in Math Connections, Course 1.
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Megan shared these three tasks that she selected to introduce the Three Reads to her grade 6 students.
Megan wrote…
” I was trying to pick tasks that directly applied to what we were doing in the classroom, which did not go as well as I was hoping. The tasks definitely highlighted some of the issues that students are encountering when reading complex word problems (to a degree I don’t know if I was expecting). I also think the level of difficulty of what I was asking the students to do was probably beyond the introductory level of the routine (especially in the introductory stages). That said, I think the 3 reads strategy will prove useful throughout the year.”
Megan,
Thank you for sharing the tasks and your experience with them. They certainly are higher demand tasks getting at conceptual understanding of measure of center, versus making a simple calculation. I’m wondering what some of the problem interpretation issues were that got highlighted. I’m guessing that rewording the question surfaced a range of understanding. Sounds like the 3 Reads served as formative assessment for you;)