#TMC15 Swan Style Task Factory

Swan Style Task Factory Maker Faire
Elizabeth Stratmore

Saturday 2:45-3:45
TMC15
Claremont, CA

The Shell Center has some great resources but it is a finite project. We can use textbooks, the Internet, and other resources to build our tasks to fit the needs of our classrooms. Swan's tasks can be broken down into 5 types.

5 Task Types

1. Card Sort
- getting students to notice and name properties

2. Matching (multiple representations)
-getting students to interpret and make connections rather than calculate

3. Always / Sometimes / Never
-getting students to generalize principles or properties

4. Create a new problem, trade, and solve
-getting students to think forward and backwards

5. Analyzing reasoning pathways
-getting students to generalize about pathways

*Each of the five have different collaboration goals.

Then we practiced by doing a card sort.

Here's my pretty poster!

And then here's the actual answer key.

And some resources:

If you only read one article on Swan's design principles, read this first one:

Malcolm Swan Design Principles.pdf

These two have additional information valuable information in getting started:

Collaborative Learning in Mathematics.pdf

Burkhardt Swan on Task Design Novice Apprentice Expert.pdf