Overview & Rationale

Complex tasks support multiple solution strategies and justification/explanation of mathematical ideas, but only if students understand what they are being asked to do! The way you set up a task will impact what both you and the students can achieve during a lesson. When a task is launched well, students can engage productively with cognitively demanding mathematical work while you support them to preserve in problem solving and monitor student thinking in preparation for the whole class discussion. When students do not understand the task posed to them, however, you will spend most of your time re-explaining the task and expectations to individual students or groups.

High-quality launches require considerable planning. You want to ensure that students understand the task – the context and language, the key mathematical ideas, the problem posed by the task, and goals and expectations. BUT you also want to make sure that you don’t give too much away! You want students to be able to do the task, but you don’t want to direct them to use certain procedures.

Your plan for the launch should clearly describe what both you and the students will do during this phase of the lesson. You can provide a general overview of what you or the students will do (e.g., “Students will sit at their desks and individually read the task silently. Then, I will ask questions to see what they understood about the task and what they are confused about. I will call on students (non-volunteers) and make sure to include students who were confused about the expectations for our previous task….”) But you also need to provide enough detail to show that you have considered the four crucial aspects we read about in Jackson et al. (2012). For example, if you say that you’ll ask questions, you should give some examples of what questions you plan to ask, indicate the purpose of a question, and perhaps describe how you’ll respond based on anticipated student responses.

I strongly recommend that you refer to the Jackson et al. (2012) article and CHAPTER 7 in the 5 Practices book as you plan for your lesson launch. The sample lesson plan in Appendix B in the 5 Practices book can also serve as a guide. The planning questions provided at the end of Jackson et al. (2012) (Figure 2) can be especially helpful as you consider how you will set up the crucial aspects of the task.