ERIC Number: EJ1456894
Record Type: Journal
Publication Date: 2025
Pages: 10
Abstractor: ERIC
ISBN: N/A
ISSN: ISSN-0025-5769
EISSN: EISSN-2330-0582
Put the Belonging Back into Which One Doesn't Belong?
Delise R. Andrews; Karla Bandemer
Mathematics Teacher: Learning and Teaching PK-12, v118 n1 p6-15 2025
For over a decade, Which One Doesn't Belong? (WODB; Danielson, 2016) has been a beloved classroom routine that invites students to engage in mathematical decision-making and justification. In the WODB routine, four related figures are shown to students, and they are asked to decide which of them doesn't belong with the other three. The beauty of the routine is the variety of ways to be "right." It's what teachers of mathematics would call a "low floor, high ceiling" task. The authors realized that the students who got the most out of the routine were those who tried to figure out an argument for why each of the four figures "didn't belong." This led the authors to think about a revised routine--one where instead of looking for ways a figure did "not" belong, students might look for ways it "did."
Descriptors: Mathematics Instruction, Elementary School Mathematics, Teaching Methods, Puzzles, Problem Solving, Elementary School Students, Mathematical Logic, Middle School Students, High School Students, Secondary School Mathematics
National Council of Teachers of Mathematics. 1906 Association Drive, Reston, VA 20191. Tel: 800-235-7566; Tel: 703-620-9840; Fax: 703-476-2570; e-mail: publicationsdept@nctm.org; Web site: https://pubs.nctm.org/
Publication Type: Journal Articles; Reports - Descriptive
Education Level: Elementary Education; Junior High Schools; Middle Schools; Secondary Education; High Schools
Audience: N/A
Language: English
Sponsor: N/A
Authoring Institution: N/A
Grant or Contract Numbers: N/A