By working through well-designed tasks, students can expand their thinking about mathematical ideas and their approaches to solving mathematical problems. They can come to see the value of looking at tasks from different perspectives and of using different representations. This article discusses four tasks that encourage high school students and…

This article describes a problem-centered curriculum for grades 9-12, using problem sets developed by a mathematics department and designed to take the place of textbooks. The students discover mathematical concepts in the context of the problems and activities in the materials.