Thin-Slicing: THe Magic Is In The Mild

Thin-sliced curricular tasks have become a tool I use in my Thinking Classroom very, very often with great success.

I've written about these once before - back when I was just learning to unlock their potential - and one of my earliest discoveries was this:
​ 

The Magic Is In The Mild​

I've only grown to be more certain of this truth ever since.

Building A Thinking Classroom rests of a bold premise - kids are largely capable of figuring out rigorous mathematics on their own.  And with the right fourteen practices in place, it turns out they truly can!

On Thursday, I wanted my 6th graders to learn the concept of quartiles as a way of organizing a data set to answer a statistical question.  Not a terribly difficult concept, but one I was worried I wouldn't be able to lead students to figure out on their own.  

But I decided to try.

Whenever I'm worried that a concept will be something I can't frame in just the right way that students can walk into it on their own, I remind myself that:
​

​The magic is In THe Mild

When I say "the magic is in the mild," what I mean is that the single most important thin-slice I devise is the first one.  If I can make the first, mildest questions so well scaffolded that students almost can't help but to get started off with immediate success, everything else reliably flows pretty well from there.

How did I decide to do that for quartiles, as an example?
​

With properly scaffolded mild questions, the kids almost can't wait to get started

1. Task Launch

Even before we get to the mild, I try to assure that I'm building the day's learning off of prior learning.  I frame the start of every thin-sliced task launch with:
​

​You can already __________, but what about __________?
​

For quartiles, that launch sounded like - ​

"You can already answer statistical questions by finding the MEDIAN, which divides a data set into HALVES, but what about dividing data set into FOURTHS, called QUARTILES?
​

- and the first, mildest question of the thinking tasks was on the screen to see.

And boom, we're already thinking.
​

2. Heavily Scaffold The Mild Questions

The task launch - plus a little bit of wait time - had the kids chomping at the bit to get started.  Most of them could already see the path forward from the screen example, and couldn't wait to rush to their board to show me how quickly they had figured out my new task.

That's the magic of the mild.
​
The mild questions were so scaffolded - exactly eight data points, easily divisible by four, and blanks to fill in - that the kids were started in no time.  In a matter of seconds, they're grouped up, at the boards, rushing to get to be the one who gets to explain to the group what they can already plainly see.

The mildest questions are your invitation into the task.  There is a place for rigor, a place for struggle, a place for challenge - but not yet.

The mild is your welcome.  It should sweep you in the door with confidence and that "I can definitely do this" feeling.

The second mild question mirrored the first - another eight-point data set, and blanks to fill in:

​Mild questions should welcome students into the task with an "I can DEFINITELY do this" feeling.

At this point, several groups are telling me this is too easy.  Confidence abounds.

The magic is in the mild.
​

2. Thin-Slice Up To Medium: Bigger Data Sets

My next slice was indeed a thin-one: data sets with 12 or 16 data points instead of 8.  Still divisible by 4, still blanks to fill in, and just the small twist that a quartile might include more than two of the data points.
​

"You have to be kidding me," was the general response from the kids.  "These aren't any harder than the mild ones!"  The confidence spills over into the medium, and they rip through these in a couple of minutes, all thanks to the start they got on the almost-too-easy mild questions.
​

The magic is in the mild.  
​

3. Thin-slice Up To Spicy: Remove the Blanks

For the next thin-slice, I removed the blanks.  Still data sets that are evenly divisible by four, but now you have to decide for yourself how many go in which blanks.

Admittedly, another  very thin slice, and not all that spicy.  But who cares?  Since I called them spicy, the momentum and confidence continue now that I'm doing supposedly spicy questions with ease.  Some days, we really are into spicy territory by now, but today, these are still pretty mild, which is ok, because

The magic is in the mild.
​

4. The struggle slice

With my commitment to making the mild questions so welcoming that the groups can walk right into the task, I know there's going to be some point in the task where I have to make the big shift.

​The struggle slice.

Sometimes that comes with the medium.  Most often it comes with the spicy.  Today it came after the spicy:
​

With confidence built in milder questions, students are much more willing to experiment on spicier ones

Now we were truly in "thinking is what you do when you don't know what to do" territory.  Without an evenly divisible number of data points, the kids genuinely didn't know what to do.  None of them.

And how could they?

Not knowing what to do was the point here.

We stopped, acknowledged the issue, and I challenged the groups to come up with their own way of dealing with the problem.  Yes, I told them, there is an "official" way, and of course I would show it to them.

"Soooooo, it looks like we've reached the struggle slice.  Any ideas?"

But first, if we can all agree that

• We figured out how to deal with an equally divisible group, and
• Even if we may not come up with the "official" way to divide groups like these, we can all at least come up with a reasonable, possible way to do so, 

then we have enough to engage in some real, deep thinking.

And did they ever!  For the first problem (with 10 data points), some creative solutions they came up with included:

• Equally putting the data points in five groups of two since four equal groups couldn't be made (great idea!)
• Giving two of the quartiles two data points, and the other two quartiles three data points (great idea!)
• Removing the upper and lower extremes - both borderline outliers - so that there were only eight data points (great idea!)
• Duplicating the data points that ended up being the 1st and 3rd quartile numbers to make 12 data points (not only a great idea, but very close to the actual method!)

​How did they get the confidence to boldly suggest these magnificent possible solutions to a thorny problem they had no business solving on their own?

From so easily and effortlessly entering the problem string to begin with, of course.

The magic at the end was born twenty minutes earlier.  The magic was in the mild.

The magic we see at the end was born when students were able to start with confidence.
​

Conclusion

"Thinking is what you do when you don't know what to do."

It is why we build thinking classrooms to begin with. 

​But it isn't easily won.  The willingness to engage with mathematics - or anything else - that we don't know how to do takes some real nurturing.

But once you've nurtured it, where it will take your students is absolutely incredible.

So how do you nurture it?  I'd love to say that it isn't magic, but it just might be.

​The magic is in the mild.

Learning to think - truly think - during math class has bled into other thinking opportunities, like figuring out how to make a science demonstration work that I wasn't able to (left) without my even asking, or considering why there might be a single shoe on a fence post on our way to lunch (right).

If you enjoyed this post, please share it!

Want to make sure you never miss a new post?  Subscribe below for email notifications of new content.

Want to read more right now?  You're in luck - this is my 83rd post! You can browse past posts by category:

• ​Building A Thinking Classroom
• Leaning Into The Science and Engineering Practices
• Classroom Practices
• Classroom Stories
• Ideas and Opinions
• Pandemic-Related Issues