Mathematical Tasks, Activities, and Tools

This summary provides an overview of chapter 5 of Effective pedagogy in

Mathematics/Pangarau: Best evidence synthesis iteration [BES] (Anthony and Walshaw, 2007).
This chapter discusses the forms of mathematical tasks used by teachers to support their students
in learning mathematics. The full document can be downloaded from this page.

Big Idea:
It is important to choose appropriate mathematical tasks and activities for students.

Key Points to be understood:

 Tasks should be designed to actively engage students in mathematical thinking.
 Tasks should take into account students’ previous knowledge and experiences.
 A range of tools should be used to support students’ understanding of the mathematical
concepts involved in tasks.

Tasks should be designed to actively engage students in

mathematical thinking.
The primary purpose of tasks in a mathematics lesson should be to engage students with a
mathematical idea.

 While there is a place in a mathematics class for practice and consolidation, “tasks that
require students to engage in complex and non-algorithmic thinking promote exploration
of connections across mathematical concepts” (p 97).
 Tasks that are open ended, rather than procedural, provide students with “something they
need to think about, not simply a disguised way of practising already demonstrated
algorithms.” (p.97). Some examples of open ended tasks:
o Instead of finding the average of a list of numbers ask the students to suggest a
possible list of numbers for a given average. (For example, the average number of
family members of students in the class is 4. What might this look like for a class
of 20 students?)
o As an exercise to encourage addition and subtraction ask “If Jimmy and his 2
brothers took out a total of 10 books from the library, how many might they each
have taken?”
o Instead of learning lists of rules to identify quadrilaterals such as diamond,
rectangle, kite, parallelogram, and rhombus, you could ask students to “Draw as
many different 4 sided shapes as you can and describe their features.”
  Implementation of tasks should focus on students’ strategies not just the answer to
problems. For this reason, tasks with multiple possible solution strategies are to be
encouraged. Asking students to explain their methods helps them develop their
mathematical understandings. Students’ success on a task should be judged by their
understanding rather than superficial indicators such as speed of completion or
correctness of answers.
 Productive mathematical tasks encourage the development of learning dispositions:
reflection, generalisation, curiosity, conjecture and exploration. Enquiry based tasks,
exploring students’ questions (for example, what shapes can be in a tessellation?) are
more appealing to students than prescriptive tasks. However, keeping mathematics
interesting and fun should not be at the expense of content. Use of manipulatives and
individual choices of activity can in some instances allow students to avoid ‘real maths’
instruction.

Tasks should take into account students’ previous knowledge

and experiences.
In selecting or developing mathematical tasks, consideration needs to be given to the ability of
students and to their previous life experiences.

Tasks should be appropriate for students’ level of ability:

 Productive task engagement requires that tasks relate closely enough to current
knowledge and skills to be understood but be different enough to extend students’
thinking. If tasks are too easy or too hard they are not motivating and are unlikely to
engage students. “Tasks that are too easy or too hard have limited cognitive value”
(p119).
 Students do not all progress along a common developmental path at the same rate. Use
your ongoing evaluation of students’ performance to help pitch the tasks at the right level.
For this to be possible you need to know what the students are capable of. This is one
particular strength of the Numeracy Development Project.

Contexts used in tasks should relate to students’ life experiences where possible:

 Use of real life contexts that are appropriate to your students’ experiences may make the
mathematics more meaningful, accessible and appealing for students. Deciding which
contexts are familiar for students is challenging (for example addition with money is not
necessarily a familiar context as children usually buy things one at a time).
 It is important that the context does not obscure the mathematics involved in the problem;
overly complicated contexts can lead to a task being more about interpreting the question
than the actual mathematics.
A range of tools should be used to support students’
understanding of the mathematical concepts involved in
tasks.
 For the purposes of this discussion, tools include but are not restricted to: physical
equipment, diagrams, graphs, examples, illustrations, problem contexts, equations,
calculators and computers. Such resources can be used to provide a frame of reference to
support the development of mathematical understanding.
 Materials need to provide a scaffold to think about mathematical ideas rather than the
focus for the learning. Using a range of materials to illustrate the same key idea helps
students build conceptual mathematical ideas.
 Getting students to record their own representations of learning can be valuable as it can
help teachers make sense of students’ strategies and provide evidence of student learning.
Students own representations are also often the most accessible to the student. When
representations are chosen by the teacher the students may not see the link between the
representation and the maths as clearly as when they use their own model.
 Using both informal and formal recording is important. Students should be given
opportunities to create their own representations before being introduced to conventional
ones; this may make the effectiveness of conventional forms more apparent to students.
 Artefacts, including pictures, diagrams and symbols, can be used to provide a ‘bridge’
between the context of the task and the mathematical ideas involved.

Written Recording
While the emphasis in the Numeracy Project is on using mental strategies to solve mathematical
problems, it is important that we realise that written recording is an important part of numeracy.
There are two main reasons that we use written recording:

 to reduce the mental load when solving a problem

 to communicate ideas to others.

Reducing mental load

If students are unable to solve a problem mentally they need to choose another way to solve the
problem; often written recording can provide this alternative. Written recording as a means of
reducing mental load can range from scribbled notes to ‘hold’ part of a problem while the student
is carrying out a mental calculation, through to formalised standard algorithms. While using pen
and paper to aid in solving problems is useful at all stages, students should not be introduced to
standard algorithms before they have a firm grasp of part-whole strategies. Introducing standard
algorithms before students have firmly established partitioning strategies can slow down the
development of mental problem solving skills and number sense.
Communicating ideas to others
Being able to communicate mathematical ideas is important. Written recording provides the basis
for both storing working and solutions to refer back to at a later time, and also a means of
communicating more complicated ideas to others. Diagrams and equations often provide a more
efficient means of communicating ideas than textual explanations.

Encouraging students to record their thinking

1. Provide good examples of a variety of forms of written recording
Ensure that your teaching models examples of a variety of forms of written recording to
your students. Explicitly teaching key forms of recording such as number lines, ratio
tables, and equations will ensure that all students have a wide range of methods of
recording available to them.

2. Expect students to use their own methods of recording as well as those taught to
them
Recording their ideas on paper with words, numbers, symbols, diagrams and pictures is
part of students' exploration of number. Both informal and formal methods of recording
contribute to students' developing understanding of number. Encourage students to share
their recording with the class and to discuss why they chose to use different methods.

Types of recording
This document (PDF, 125KB) illustrates some of the methods students at different stages may
use for recording or communicating their ideas. The types of methods described include written
explanations, equations, use of calculators and both formal and informal diagrams.

 Written explanations are an extension of oral explanations and may be no more than the
spoken explanation written out in full.
 Equations use symbols to represent quantities, unknowns and operations and are a more
efficient way of recording mathematical operations.
 Calculators can perform much the same role as standard algorithms in that they allow the
student to find an answer without requiring a real understanding of the operation being
performed. When a calculator or standard algorithm has been used to obtain an answer
encourage students to use a mental strategy to explain the reasonableness of the answer.
 Formal diagrams, such as number lines and ratio tables can be taught to students, and use
conventions which are widely understood.
  Informal diagrams include students’ own illustrations of problems to help them clarify
what calculations need to be carried out.

Click here to download a file (PDF, 125KB) with examples of the types of recording that
students at different stages are likely to use.

Note on standard algorithms:

While standard written algorithms are a valuable tool for solving problems too difficult to be
worked out mentally, it is important that students first develop their part-whole thinking to
enable them to recognise whether the answers they obtain are reasonable. Introducing written
working forms too early may also discourage students from developing mental strategies by
providing them with a single method that always works for a given operation. While it is true
that a properly applied standard algorithm will always provide a solution there are many
instances in which it is not the most appropriate way to approach a problem, for example 99 x 5,
or 798 + 99.

Basic Facts
This page contains a Powerpoint presentation and teaching resource relating to the teaching of
basic facts.

Powerpoint presentation: (PPT, 727KB) Suitable for use in a staff meeting or similar.

Teaching Resource: (PDF, 1MB) Activities for teaching and practice.

Decimal Number System

Big Idea
Our decimal number system is a base-ten place value system. This system extends infinitely in
two directions towards very large numbers and very small numbers.

Background points for teaching

An understanding of the number system is central to success in mathematics. This tutorial
examines 4 mathematical ideas associated with the base-ten place value system. Each of these
ideas is described with examples so that teachers can gain a picture of the mathematics they are
teaching.

 The places (or columns) in the number system are based around groupings of ten.
 The base ten place value system has a repeating naming pattern.
 The decimal point is a convention that indicates the units place.
  Zero is necessary as a placeholder. For example, 1.08

The places (or columns) in the number system are based

around groupings of ten. For example, 10 ones = 1 ten, 10
hundreds = 1 thousand
One of the most basic ideas within the number system is that there is a 10-to-1 relationship
between the values of any two adjacent places (or columns). Figure 1 illustrates the x10
relationship between adjacent places as you move to the left.

From Figure 1 you can see that ten of any one place makes one of the next larger place, for
example, 10 hundreds = 1 thousand, 10 hundredths = 1 tenth. This ten makes 1 concept continues
indefinitely to larger and larger numbers with the relationship between adjacent places remaining
the same regardless of which two places are being considered.

The 10-to-1 relationship also allows you to understand the relationship between any two places
in the number system. For example: The thousands are 2 places to the left of the tens. This means
there is a 10x10 (102) relationship between tens and thousands: 100 tens = 1 thousand. The tens
are 3 places to the left of the hundredths. This means there is a 10x10x10 (103) relationship
between tens and thousands: 1000 hundredths = 1 ten.

The 10-to-1 relationship can be viewed as a 1-to-10 relationship between adjacent places to the
right where the places are getting smaller by a factor of ten (see figure 2). In other words a
division of ten or a tenth of any place makes one of the next smaller place, for example, a tenth
of a thousand = one hundred (1000÷10=100), a tenth of a tenth = one hundredth (0.1 ÷10 =
0.01).

The 1-to-10 relationship also allows you to understand the relationship between any two places
in the number system. For example: The tenths are 3 places to the right of the hundreds. This
means there is a ÷10÷10÷10 (10-3) relationship between hundreds and tenths: 1/1000 of a
hundred = 1 tenth.

The base ten place value system has a repeating naming

pattern
Whole Numbers
The base ten place value number system has a repeating naming pattern. The pattern of ones,
tens and hundreds names firstly the units, then the thousands, and then the millions etc.

The convention of including a space between each family or group helps us read the number. For
example 67 000 = sixty seven thousand, or 502 000 = five hundred and two thousand.

Decimals
The grouping pattern also extends to the right of the decimal point.

The decimals in the naming pattern have equivalent decimals which are easier to read. For
example 10 thousandths is equivalent to 1 hundredth. So, although the naming pattern continues
to the left of the decimal point the convention is to name the decimal by the place value column
furthest to the right. For example, 0.7 is read as 7 tenths, while 0.83 is read as 83 hundredths.
Often decimals are simply read as a string of digits, with 0.83 read as zero point eight three.
Encouraging students to read decimals by using their place value supports them in their
development of number sense.

The decimal point is a convention that indicates the units

place
The role of the decimal point is to indicate the units or ones place in a number and it does that by
sitting immediately to the right of that place. Consequently the decimal point also works to
separate the units (on the left) from parts of the unit (on the right).

As shown below a number can be expressed in different ways depending on the selection of the
unit. The decimal point indicates which position is the unit.

6501.4 (in this case the “ones” is assumed)

650.14 tens (in this case the units are tens)
65014 tenths (in this case the units are tenths)
6.5014 thousands (in this case the units are thousands)

Zero is necessary as a placeholder. For example, 1.08

Like any other digit, zero indicates the number of items in the place (or column) in which it
appears. For example, 205 means 2 hundreds, 0 tens and 5 ones. Without the 0, the 205 appears
as 25, which means 2 tens and 5 ones. We refer to the zero as a place holder. In the example it
holds the tens place, so that the 2 is correctly located in the hundreds place. Zero is also needed
as a place holder in decimal numbers. In both whole numbers and decimals the zero holds the
place between a digit and the decimal point. For example in 300 the two zeros hold the ones and
tens places so that the 3 is correctly placed in the hundreds place, while in 6.05 the zero holds the
tenths place so that the 5 appears in the hundredths place. The zero is not needed as a place
holder when it is not between a digit and the decimal point, for example 005 and 5 are the same,
as are 1.50 and 1.5.

Fractions
This power point presentation (PPT, 381KB) is based on seven teaching scenarios and outlines
the key ideas about fractions and how to communicate these to students.

The teaching scenarios (PDF, 63KB) used in the power point are also available as a pdf. It would
be useful to print these out and distribute to teachers prior to the professional development
meeting, giving teachers time to consider their responses.

Ratios
Big Idea
Ratios allow us to compare the relative sizes of two quantities.

Background points for teaching

An understanding of ratios involves understanding the following:

 Ratios can compare a part to the whole.

An example of a part to a whole ratio is the number of females in a class to the number of
students in the class. If there are 8 females in the class of 20 students the ratio of girls to
students can be expressed 8:20 (females to students). Because this ratio is relating a part
to a whole it can also be expressed as a fraction (8/20) or as a percentage (40%).

 Ratios can compare parts to parts.

An example of a part to a part ratio is where the number of females in a class is compared
to the number of males. If there are 8 females in a class of 20 the ratio of females to
males is 8:12. It is important when using ratios to clearly state what the comparison is
made in relation to. One of the most common uses of part-to-part ratios are odds. The
odds of an event happening is a ratio of the number of ways an event can happen to the
number of ways it cannot happen.

 Ratios can also be a rate.

Part-to-whole and part-to-part ratios compare two quantities of the same thing. Rates on
the other hand are examples of ratios where a comparison is made between quantities of
different things. In rates the measuring units are different for the quantities being
compared and the rate is expressed as one quantity per the other quantity. For example
the value of food can be expressed as price per kilogram, fuel efficiency can be expressed
as litres per 100 km.

 A proportion expresses the relationship between two ratios.

A proportion is a statement of the equality between two rations. For example if it takes 10
balls of wool to make 15 beanies, 6 beanies will take 4 balls of wool. In this example the
ratio of 2:3 (balls to beanies) can be applied to each situation. Solving proportional
problems involves applying a known ratio to situations that are proportionally related and
finding one of the measures when the other is given. For example, in the beanie situation
the ratio of 2:3 (balls to beanies) can be applied to the problem where you want to find
out how many balls of wool are needed to make 33 beanies.
2:3 = ?:33,
? = 22

Decimals, fractions and percentages

Big Idea

Decimals, fractions and percentages are closely related.

Background Points for teaching:

 Decimals are another way of writing fractions.
 Percentages are another way of writing hundredths.

 Students need to develop some fraction-decimal relationships as benchmarks.

Decimals are another way of writing fractions.

Because decimals are part of the base-ten place value system, the clearest connections between
decimals and fractions occur where the denominator of a fraction is a power of ten:

1/10 = 0.1
3/100 = 0.03
6/1000 = 0.006

Place value materials can be used to support students to develop conceptual links between
fractions and decimals.

For example, the following representation shows both 1.43 and 1+ 4/10 + 3/100

There is a 10-to-1 relationship between the value of any two adjacent places in a number.

For example:

4 tenths = 40 hundredths

1.68 = 1 + 6/10 + 8/100

 = 1 + 68/100

By applying place value it is simple to convert from a decimal to fraction. Understanding that the
place to the right of the decimal point is the tenths place makes it immediately clear that, for
example,

0.3 = three tenths = 3/10

0.47 = forty seven hundredths = 47/100

It is possible to convert fractions to decimals by (i) converting the denominator to a power of ten,
or (ii) by using equivalent fractions or (iii) by using division. It is often more useful to work with
numbers in the form of decimals than fractions.

1. Fractions can be converted to a denominator of a power of ten:

3/5 = 6/10 or 60/100 = 0.6

2. By using equivalent fractions it is possible to convert the fraction to a simple denominator that is
then easily converted to a decimal. It is therefore useful to know some simple conversions
between fractions and decimals.

3/12 = 1/4 = 0.25

3. By using division a decimal can be found.

1/3 = 1 ÷ 3 = 0.33333.

Percentages are another way of writing hundredths.

The term percent is another name for hundredths. A fraction expressed as a hundredth can simply
be renamed as a percent. For example, 1/4, or 25/100 is expressed as 0.25 and as 25%.

An understanding of the role of the decimal point in naming decimals can help in understanding
the link between hundredths and percents. The decimal point identifies the units. So in the
decimal 0.742 the decimal point identifies the unit of ones. The word ones is implied. It could
also be written as 7.42 tenths of 74.2 hundredths. The term hundredths can be replaced with
percent to be 74.2%. Further explanations of the decimal point in naming decimals can be found
in the information on the Decimal Number System.

Percents can be represented pictorially in the same way as tenths and hundredths using base-ten
models such as 10 x 10 grids and circular disks marked around the edge. Place value columns
can also show the term percent.

Ones Tenths Hundredths Thousandths

 (Percent)

Students need to develop some fraction-decimal relationships as benchmarks.

To solve problems it is helpful for students to be able to interchange between fractions and
decimal units. For example, if a student was to work out the saving of 25%, the conversion to a
1/4 would make the problem easier to solve. The benchmarks of 1/10s, 1/4s, 1/3s and 1/5s are
useful to know after an understanding of the fraction-decimal relationship has been established.