Building A thinking Classroom - the Second "Non-Curricular" Task

 After great enthusiasm and success with the first non-curricular thinking task on the first two days of school, I turned to choosing a second such task.

As a reminder, in Building Thinking Classrooms in Mathematics, Peter Liljedahl recommends using "highly engaging non-curricular" thinking tasks for 3-5 days to transition the students into becoming thinkers.

Image taken from https://buildingthinkingclassrooms.com/14-practices/

In particular, Liljedahl offers teachers three particular categories of non-curricular thinking tasks that he has found to be particularly effective at helping students transition into thinking: card tricks, numeracy tasks, and "good problems."  I chose a card trick for my first task because I thought it sounded naturally engaging (and it was!).  I chose a numeracy task for the second task because I thought those didn't look very engaging and I wanted to fight through one early to get a gauge of their value moving forward.

The particular task I (actually, my department chair) chose from Liljedahls' website is called "Planning A Class Party."  It involves setting a budget for a hypothetical class party and having the students decide how to allocate the money to three treats - soda ($1.88 per 2-liter bottle at my local Walmart), Doritos ($4.38 per average sized bag at my local Walmart), and Pizza (on sale for $6.99 per medium pizza, plus $5.29 for delivery).  We set an assumption that each person in the class would donate $3, and got thinking.  How many of each item should we buy?  Each group set off to make its own plan.
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To add a little drama to the activity, I brought a bag of Doritos and a bottle of Coke and I used the actual prices from the local Walmart. This ended up adding a lot of value to the activity.

I was skeptical that the task would hold their interest, and WOW was I wrong!  In addition to doling out the budgeted money, they were including non-mathematical factors like...

• What if not everyone donates $3?  How much should we assume we will actually have to spend?
• Could we save the delivery fee by getting a parent to bring the pizza?
• How many people can one bottle of coke and one bag of Doritos realistically serve?
• What about sales tax?
• Could we get generic brands?

​And so on.  It was really terrific, and the kids didn't want to stop when it was time to.

On top of the engagement and the great thinking, I also got a quick glance at how well they could operate with decimals - an upcoming curricular topic.  

All in all, the activity was a great end to a highly engaging first (3-day) week.  The kids are looking forward to math class each day and are, all things considered, doing a pretty good job of thinking.

I have one more day planned for a non-curricular task before I try to take the curricular thinking task plunge.  

I have a candids-only photo policy, which I violated to indulge these two hams in a staged photo.  

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