I chose to assess my students using the Create the Problem activity

because I am trying to encourage my students to share their creative ideas whether

they think they are right or wrong. I know that most of the tasks I give to my class
have multiple solution paths, but it seems like some of my students think there is
one correct method and that the rest are incorrect. I thought that it would be clear
to the students that this assessment activity has an infinite amount of solutions and
would help them become more comfortable answering questions by sharing their
creative ideas. After reflecing on the assessment it was hard to tell how comfortable
the students were diverging from what they thought I wanted. While a many of the
students created a question that
fit the task, a large number used
a question similar to the material
we recently worked on. While
there were a few original ideas it
is hard to tell if the lack of original
content is the result of the
students being unable to produce
this type of thinking or that
closely linking it to the problems
we had performed the past few
days was easier and that there
were no instructions explicitly
saying they could not do this.
I think that a flaw in the task itself was that even if a student created a
thoughtful question that would use the given relationships as a solution, they could
have been trying to recreate a question we worked on previously that could work
with the graph the students were given (although it does say something that they
were able to identify that the graph works with the problems we had previously
worked with). Some students were able to do this and the context they gave was so
vague that it was impossible to determine if they were reaching the mathematical
goals I set for the task or they were modeling the question after questions we had
previously discussed. The image to the right shows a student who created the
question There were 3 people, lunchman, mailman, Suzan, for there jobs they drive
giving out lunch, mail, and Suzan gives help for every mile driven how much money
do they make?. This alone does not show me that this student understands
anything about the mathematical goals of the task. If the assessment had been
given prior to our exploration of these types of questions this would have helped me
see that this student understood that the three characters in the story have
different payment plans because the x-axis is labeled distance and the y-axis is
labeled money so this student sees that as the distance is changing there is some
change in money so these must be two variables that can be used in a problem. The
day before this assessment we did a problem where the characters and situation
was different but the variables were distance and money earned, so I cant say that

these students either identified the variables on their own or mimicked the question
from the day before.
I do believe that I reached the goal of getting the students to think about the
definition of a thoughtful question. To start the task I posed the questions what are
some hard math problems? The answers I got were mostly long strings of
arithmetic. I pointed this out to the students and then asked what they thought the
difference between a hard math problem and a thoughtful math problem. The
responses I got surprised me because we have never really talked about what a
thoughtful problem was. One student said it may look easy compared to the hard
problems the students just thought of but it would take some time to answer. I
asked the class why they thought that was. The answer that I thought demonstrated
the most understanding of what a thoughtful cognitively demanding problem is was
a student who said it would take time because there isnt a way to solve
thoughtful problems like there were for the [arithmetic] hard problems we had been
discussing previously. Following the time allotted for the students to create their
problems we discussed observations the students initially had regarding the graph
they were given. After sharing these observations I asked if a question created from
one of these observations would be thoughtful. Most of the students said that it
would not be thoughtful because it was something that you could just see and that
if you knew how to read a graph you would be able to answer it. They proceeded to
explain that a thoughtful question actually connected a few observations and
incorporated them into the necessary solution.
The mathematical practice I think this task captured was reasoning
abstractly. There was no context given so the students had to make sense of an
abstract figure. Below is an example of a student who was able to assign meaning
to an abstract figure. It is clear from the context
this student creates that they understand the relationship between the lines on the
graph. It is important that this student notes that the mountain bike is faster than
the tricycle and that one of the brothers fell and then that the student correctly
labels these on the graph because this shows that the student is able to create an
original problem and reached the math goals because they recognized features of
the graph and connected it to realistic context.

To improve the task I would have students critique others problems and
determine whether or not the question successfully fulfills the requirement of using
the graph as a solution. This process may not help see whether the student who
created the problem achieved the math goals but it will help identify whether those
who are critiquing the problem understand how it could connect to the math goals.
For example in the first example of student work we do not know whether or not
that student connected to the math concepts or was recreating a previous problem
but we would hear specific reasons on how the question could connect to the
mathematical goals. Another student could note that the mailman makes a salary
and does not get paid at a rate based on the distance he travelled. This would also
bring in the mathematical practice of making use of structure and the goal that
students can construct viable arguments and critique each others reasoning.
I implemented the task in all of my classes and noticed as the day went on I
gravitated towards the question of what a thoughtful mathematical question was
instead of how the students could fulfill the mathematical goals of the task. I think
the students enjoyed focusing on this type of theoretical question. In my B hour
which is almost 50% students who require special services I got 80% of the students
to voluntarily share their ideas, which is much higher than usual. For this class I
focused on asking what a hard question is and framed it as a challenge which they
really enjoyed. I think that this hooked the students and raised the level of
engagement. Again this was not a mathematical goal of the lesson, but it is an
important factor in reaching mathematical goals. The students in this class
produced less complex questions. In other classes the majority of the questions
would need the person answering to make a few connections because of the

emphasis the discussion had on what a thoughtful question was. A,C, and D hour
produced more of these thoughtful problems and B hour produced more hard
problems because of the brainstorming we did with hard questions. Although B
hour had a greater number of surface level questions I was satisfied with the
engagement.
This experience helped illuminate how timing plays a part in assessment and
how the subject that gets the most emphasis during the introduction to a task can
sway the outcomes of the assessment. Since first semester I have done a much
better job explaining new tasks to the point where students werent confused with
what they will be doing in the task. The result of the task was that my students are
more informed about the process of creating thoughtful cognitively demanding
math problems. If I want the take away of an assessment to be how the students
reached certain goals I need to work on constructing debriefing strategies which
directly address how the goals were reached.