Anchor Tasks

April 16, 2020

Teachers begin anchor task lessons by presenting a problem that activates their students’ prior knowledge and requires them to collaboratively solve it through productive struggle.  Children normally work in small learning pods and share out their thought processes a few minutes after beginning.  Pulling together contributions from different groups leads to new discoveries and questions that children discuss in a second round of podded collaboration.  The process is repeated several times until the problem is solved.

While working in small groups, students have access to concrete, pictorial, and abstract tools.  If they solve the problem, they write out their solution and how they arrived at it.  If they’re confused, they create a written explanation of what they understand, what they are still stuck on, and questions that they hope other groups can answer.  When they share out their work, children take on a teaching role.

The teacher plays an integral role in facilitating this collaborative approach.  In addition to translating student thinking into comprehensible language that all children can understand, they must also pull students towards solutions without giving away answers.  All the while, they need to check for understanding and ensure that all students contribute their thoughts. 

See examples below:

The expert math teacher recognizes the challenge in making anchor task instruction meaningful.  The mode of instruction, they understand, is only valuable when children possess strong collaboration skills.  Therefore, during the early days of school, they train their students to speak and listen to their partners.  The process can be arduous but it’s worth the academic yield.

When planning lessons, they carefully assign groups that will foster collaboration.  No child should dominate discussions or feel intimidated to share their thinking.  During lessons, they create mechanisms to hold all students accountable by cold calling on individuals and/or requiring whiteboard exchanges.  Knowing that some of their students might have already learned the anchor task topic or are likely to grasp the concept quickly, they always prepare extension work, so that collective learning is not compromised.

Although they find anchor task instruction valuable, the educator implements it judiciously.  They’re well aware that productive struggle can quickly lead to frustration and undesirable outcomes.  Every minute a child spends stalemated with an anchor task is a minute not spent practicing skills and/or engaging with work that will advance their mathematical level.