When we were first thrown into our emergency distance learning format 1 year ago, we kicked off our new online classes in survival mode. Students spent a lot of time those first weeks completing lessons on adaptive learning apps. But as we settled into our new model of school, I wanted to get back to a mathematics model based more on inquiry and hands-on learning.
One of my favorite inquiry-based math models are the 3-Act Math tasks (originally developed by educator Dan Meyer), which are designed to inspire curiosity in students and an authentic desire to solve a mathematic problem.
In our online (and soon-to-be hybrid) format, I've had to redesign the method of delivery some to allow for inquiry, collaboration and experimentation in math during both our synchronous and asynchronous times of day.
3-Act Lesson Resources
Since Dan started the 3-Act model, several other educators have become regular developers of 3-Acts, and there are lessons available for all grade levels:
Graham Fletcher's 3-Acts for K-5 (scroll to bottom of page for even more resource links)
Kyle Pearce 3-Acts for grades 3-12
Robert Kaplinsky 3-Acts for K-12
Presentation with slides & Google forms
Several years ago I started converting my favorite 3-Acts lessons into a slide deck format. The slides were a nice way to help me not only reveal one step at a time, but to also help me plan ahead and remember what questions I wanted to ask as we were working through the task.
In our virtual setting, it's a helpful way to present online, and take notes that students can see clearly during our classroom conversations. The slides also make it easy to download individual pages that I may want to share to students during asynchronous works times via Google Classroom or another digital management tool.
I also recently tried using a
Google Form to present and guide students through a 3-Act task. After discussing as a group, the form gave students an opportunity to also record their individual thoughts and work. And using multiple sections in a Google form is a great way to still manage the Act 2 and Act 3 reveals to occur after students have generated their own questions and thoughts about the "math mystery" presented.
With a significant amount of our day asynchronous, or in smaller synchronous groups right now, the format of using a Google Form also allows me to assign some 3-Acts as independent work or to small groups to work on in a breakout. While I prefer the collaboration of discussing a 3-Act task whole group, I've also found success (once students have practiced the task several times) in letting some small groups lead these tasks on their own (especially my students needing a math extension) or starting the task with a whole group notice/wonder and then letting students work independently on solving before reviewing our work again as a whole group.
Jamboard for collaborating & visualizing thinking
Google's Jamboard whiteboard app has been my new favorite tool in the last year for digital collaboration. It's been simple for my 2nd graders to learn and use, and gives us a lot of options for both group work and individual work.
Jamboard has become my tool of choice for our virtual notice/wonder activities. It gives me the options of doing all of the recording on the page, or allowing students editing access to write thoughts on the board themselves. Jamboard also makes it easy to manage separate pages for my small groups as I repeat the 3-Act task with each group. I can create templates for each part of the task by uploading pre-made images, duplicate pages quickly for each group's notes, and even download individual pages to share with teams or students as needed.
Students love being able to draw on a Jamboard screen, collaborate with their team, or upload images of their work on paper. Assigning a 3-Act Jamboard to students via Google Classroom (either a collaborative board or as a "copy for each student") has worked well for students' estimating and submitting their thinking about the task.
Structuring the task within new time constraints
In our distance model (and soon in our hybrid model) we've spent more time working in small groups for shorter stints of time, instead of having long blocks of live time together like we did in class. For that reason, I've restructured the 3-Act tasks to happen over the course of 2 or 3 small group sessions. The tasks are already designed well with natural breaking points, so we typically cover Act 1 (the hook, the notice/wonder, the estimating) in our first session, and Act 2 (the release of more info + work time) in another session and Act 3 (the reveal and reviewing our work) in a third session.
Sometimes, Act 2 can start in a live group and then continue independently. This has given students an opportunity to work at their own pace to continue thinking about and solving the problem, so that everyone has something to share when we return to our small groups for Act 3.
This model has also worked well in our typical, in-person classroom setting for assigning some 3-Acts as an extension activity to small groups of students.
Links to my "virtual" 3 Acts
