General Guidelines

To add a post, you will need to have a completed profile, including an about me section. All contributions will be moderated before going live to ensure high-quality content. Please follow the Post Guidelines before submitting your post for review. Once your post is published, you will lose your editing rights…if you find an error or would like to edit your post, please email riley@mathematicaltasks.org and include the permalink, we can “unpublish” your work while you edit.

Task Guidelines

This guide is intended to help you contribute a task that is consistent with the mission of MathematicalTasks.org. Before publishing, all tasks will need all of the following features. Some types of features may not be practical for your task, if that is the case, please kindly explain why.

Within your task:

    • You must be the intellectual property owner of any task published to this site. For example, you may not take a task from someone else’s published work and claim it as your own…that puts the integrity of this site at risk. If your task was inspired by someone else’s work, please award credit appropriately.
    • Your task must be a High Cognitive Demand Task, sometimes known as “Low Floor, High Ceiling Tasks.” By this, we mean your task is a Level 3 “Procedures with Connections” or Level 4 “Doing Mathematics” when considering the Task Analysis Guide. Please read the article posted about the Task Analysis Guide.
    • Include a standard. Many schools use the Common Core State Standards, please list whichever standards (and the standard’s language) for whatever standard you hope students will achieve by completing this task.
    • Provide Teacher Resources. If there is anticipated student responses, sample student work, structured talk notes, or anything a teacher may find helpful when implementing the task, please include them as a Word Document or PDF.
    • Provide Student Tangibles. If your task is a worksheet that you have created, include a copy in your post. Some tasks require cut-outs or materials, please list those or provide those handouts for our readers. Teachers are more likely to use a task that includes all of the parts.

Final Check:

    • Featured Image – This should be relevant to your task, see some of the published examples if you need some ideas. It should be simple for a reader to see the featured image and be curious about your task.
      • This may not be a picture of you.
    • Categories Selected – You should always select “Task” and then also choose the categories that best fit your content. Most posts include about 3 categories. These tags are nested and aligned with the Common Core State Standards (CCSS). If your task is associated with a CCSS, selecting a category should help. This helps our readers find tasks relevant to their search.
    • Tags – This is the fun part! Add anything that comes to mind when you think about your task. The more tags you add, the more searchable your content is and the more relevant it will be to readers.
      • Please do not tag your name, this will be untagged by admin.
      • Many authors want to tag the CCSS that is within the task.
    • Preview your task as it’s formatted on the website. We want you to be happy with what you publish!

Article Guidelines

Articles are intended to teach our readers or tell a story about an experience around mathematical tasks or in math education. When writing, please be as academic as possible, your contributions will be read by many people and we want you to look good. For that reason, please cite any research when making academic claims when possible. Alternatively, write freely about your experiences so others may learn about your Teacher Knowledge.

When you are done writing, please complete the following steps to enhance your article.

    • Featured Image – (optional) This should be relevant to your article if you choose this option.
    • Categories Selected – You should always select “Teacher Knowledge.” Likely, none of the other options will apply to your post. As this site grows, we may add administrator or teacher specific distinctions to articles.
    • Tags – This is the fun part! Add anything that comes to mind when you think about your task. The more tags you add, the more searchable your content is and the more relevant it will be to readers.
      • Please do not tag your name, this will be untagged by admin.
    • Include images, graphs, charts, etc. – (optional) Articles are more readable when they are broken up or have an image to support your claim, don’t worry too much about formatting, it changes based on someone’s screen size anyway.
    • Preview your article as it’s formatted on the website. Click the “Preview” button at the top. We want you to be happy with what you publish!