COURTNEY

 MANZ  MATH  383  SPRING  2017  

 
 
Citation:

Isler, I., Marum, T., Stephens, A., Blanton, M., Knuth, E., & Gardiner A. M. (2014). The String
Task Not Just for High School. Teaching Children Mathematics, (21)(5),282-291.

Summary:

This article discusses the importance of introducing functions in elementary school

before they start an algebra course in high school. The article follows a study in elementary
school classrooms from year 3-5 all year working on functional reasoning. The three things the
article was looking for students to learn were recursive thinking, covariational thinking, and
correspondence. The main task that this article discusses is the string task.

In the string task each group was given 5 strings that had a knot in the middle. Each
string was also color coded, and each color string had to be cut a certain amount of times.
Students were then to find a relationship between the number of cuts, and the pieces of string.
L was to represent the number of cuts, and S was to represent the number of strings. Students
were then to find a relationship between the two. They were encouraged to create a table and
look at the patterns they found. Then as a class they came together to create an equation. At
the end of the article to test linear growth understanding they created a task where students
had to find how many people could sit at tables using a square table that sits 4. Then the
teacher would ask how many tables you would need for 8 people, and so on. A really
interesting finding from this study is that student’s growth in functional thinking almost doubled
after both of these tasks!

Take Away:

This is a picture of the string task. It shows the process of how you could implement this in
your own classroom. The equation students eventually came up with at the end of the exercise
was Cuts x 2+1= Pieces of String