On November 27, I visited the grades 5&6&7 class at Quilchena to continue our focus on numeracy and for this session together I selected a numeracy task from Dr Peter Liljedahl’s website. The task continues the thinking we have been doing about water issues and and moves to thinking about agency around water conservation. We took some time together to go through what the task was asking of the students, what assumptions they needed to make, what calculations might be necessary and how they could share their recommendations.

Teachers Jen Yager and Sam Davis personalized the task by changing the names to teachers’ names from their staff. This made for some interesting comments about dental hygiene habits!

We needed to pause after the students read through and shared their understanding of the task with each other. Based on the experience we had with the last numeracy task we did, we had agreed to provide some supports to ensure students were able to get started with the task successfully. We talked through what the task was asking, what information they might need to research, what assumptions they needed to make and asked them about different ways they might approach the task.

When some of the students weren’t clear on what the differences between no flow, low flow and high flow of water was, a student quickly demonstrated for them at the sink.

The students researched the Canadian Dental Association’s recommendations for teeth brushing and did calculations for water usage. Based on their findings, they made recommendations to the teachers on ways they could conserve water while maintaining good dental hygiene. Some students wrote this up as a “report” while one student wrote a letter to her teacher with specific recommendations, backed up with her evidence.

Numeracy tasks such as these, organized by grade ranges, can be found on Dr. Peter Liljedahl’s website HERE.

~Janice