Math problems without limits

And also, it's spring.

How can one be expected to work when the garden looks like this?

It’s spring, and I’m feeling it. I’m exhausted all the time. I don’t want to leave my garden. The early morning light tempts me to get out of bed too early on weekends, and I stay up too late enjoying the warm air and smell of flowers in bloom. Teachers know the feeling of spring well. We love our students, but we’re sick of telling the same student for eight months now to bring his book to class, to check his work, to for the love of god stop tapping his pencil. We all need a break.

For that reason, I’m not writing a new post this week but sharing something I wrote for another blog. I’ve long admired Math for All’s work, and I was thrilled to be asked to join their amazing team this year. If you don’t know about them already, check out the rest of the website — including the blog posts by my colleagues — while you’re over there.

This one is on what I call self-differentiating problems. You’re probably more familiar with the term Jo Boaler uses: “Low-Floor/High Ceiling Problems.” These are the same, but I started calling them self-differentiating because that term more clearly points to the role they play in a classroom. These can’t be done every day, of course, unless you teach integrated math in a non-traditional setting (jealous!). Today, for example, I worked with a teacher who had to teach the quadratic formula. Sometimes you need to teach really explicitly, and sometimes students just need to memorize. But for those other times, here’s a way to meet every student where they are and let them take their understanding as far as they want to.