Georgia Department of Education
Effective Instructional Practices Guide
Mathematics Effective Instructional Practices
Richard Woods, State School Superintendent
Three-Act Tasks: Step-by-Step “Cheatsheet”
3-Acts and Patient Problem Solving (Teaching without the Textbook)
Adapted from Dan Meyer
Developing the mathematical Big Idea behind the 3-Act task:
• Create or find/use a clear visual which tells a brief, perplexing mathematical story. Video or live
action works best. (See resource suggestions in the Guide to 3-Act Tasks)
• Video/visual should be real life and allow students to see the situation unfolding.
• Remove the initial literacy/mathematics concerns. Make as few language and/or math
demands on students as possible. You are posing a mathematical question without words.
• The visual/video should inspire curiosity or perplexity which will be resolved via the
mathematical big idea(s) used by students to answer their questions. You are creating an
intellectual need or cognitive dissonance in students.
Enacting the 3-Act in the Classroom
Act 1 (The Question):
Set up student curiosity by sharing a scenario:
• Teacher says, “I’m going show you something I came across and found interesting” or,
“Watch this.”
• Show video/visual.
• Teacher asks, “What do you notice/wonder?” and “What are the first questions that come
to mind?”
• Students share observations/questions with a partner first, then with the class (Think-Pair-
Share). Students have ownership of the questions because they posed them.
• Leave no student out of this questioning. Every student should have access to the scenario.
No language or mathematical barriers. Low barrier to entry.
• Teacher records questions (on chart paper or digitally-visible to class) and ranks them by
popularity.
• Determine which question(s) will be immediately pursued by the class. If you have a
particular question in mind, and it isn’t posed by students, you may have to do some skillful
prompting to orient their question to serve the mathematical end. However, a good video
should naturally lead to the question you hope they’ll ask. You may wish to pilot your video
on colleagues before showing it to students. If they don’t ask the question you are after,
your video may need some work.
• Teacher asks for estimated answers in response to the question(s). Ask first for best
estimates, then request estimates which are too high and too low. Students are no defining
and defending parameters for making sense of forthcoming answers.
• Teacher asks students to record their actual estimation for future reference.
Act 2 (Information Gathering):