Student Work

This task is called "roll and record" and it is a task that the students complete a few days a week during their math stations.  Students are given two dice, and asked to roll the dice.  They then have to count up the dots (addition) and then record the answer in the given column on the piece of paper. I do not think that this is a higher-level cognitive task because they only have to count up the specific dots on the dice. There is, realistically, only one way to solve this task, so I'm not sure it would classify as a higher-level cognitive task.  The chart only goes up to nine, because the dice numbers only go up to four. My teacher had created the dice on her own, so there are at most two sides that have the same numbers. 

Three Questions

1. Do the students even know this is addition?
2. How can this task be transformed into a higher-level cognitive task?
3. The chart only goes up to nine; will the teacher use regular dice to get to numbers higher than nine?

In order to find out the first question's answer, I would need to talk to my teacher and see how she introduced this task to the students.  Did she mention that this is basic addition? It may also help to talk to the students to see if they realize what they are doing or if they know what counting together two sets up numbers, is called addition.

In order to find out the second question's answer, I could introduce simple story problems to the students or even have the students create their own charts after rolling the dice and counting up the dots. I would definitely need to think about what tasks I could use in order to advance student thinking and require them to use higher cognitive level thinking. 

For the third question, I would need to talk to my teacher about this. This is a worksheet she got from her math curriculum book, so I could see what else is in the book related to this topic.