Overview

This part focuses on the third component of a Learning Trajectory—the instructional tasks teachers use to help students move through the levels of the developmental progression of understanding and skill. This part introduces several instructional tasks that are designed to help students develop knowledge and skill relevant to particular levels of the volume Learning Trajectory. The focus here is on the early levels of the Learning Trajectory, as well as opportunities to think about modifying an instructional task in order to target a particular level.

Key Points

• A “good” instructional task
  1. Engages children at different levels (i.e., children can solve the task with different-level strategies)
  2. Requires concepts, skills, and problem solving
  3. Aligns with the level just beyond the “mastered” level of the majority of children
• Asking different kinds of follow-up questions as students work on an activity can be a way of supporting the learning of students who are at various levels of the Learning Trajectory within the context of the same activity.
• Asking students to predict how many cubes will fit in a box can help them begin to develop a spatial numerical scheme rather than just counting the cubes they use as they fill the box.