This search engine searches all of the sites below to quickly help you find a problem-based lesson (also called 3-Act Task, mathematical modeling, or application problem):

The links below are the pages that are being searched by the search engine:

There must be many great sources of lessons that I am missing.  Please leave me a comment to let me know which websites I need to add to the search engine.

71 Comments

  1. Wow! This is amazing! Thank you so much for doing this. One other great site I’ve found is HungryTeacher.com It has some very cool project ideas, similar to Mathalicious but not as detailed. Keep up the great work!

    @EdCamposJR

    • Hi Teresa. Glad it is useful. I searched around gogeometry.com but couldn’t find anything like a problem-based lesson. Could you give me a specific link to a lesson to check out?

  2. Hi Jennifer. There are some cool lessons there but I don’t know if they would fall under the category of problem based lessons I am aspiring to capture here. Thanks for your idea!

    • Hi Shaun. Check out Google’s Custom Search at https://www.google.com/cse/. That is where you can create your own search engine. It is rather robust but not perfect. For example, it is very challenging to include a site but exclude the blog posts.

      Regarding your suggestions, those are all great sites but Graphing Stories and Fawn’s awesome blog are not really within the problem-based learning domain so that is why I haven’t included them. That being said, both of them have been links on the right side of my blog for quite some time so I definitely value them both.

      I am having trouble getting the Barbie Bungee jump to load but I will try again another time to check it out.

  3. Have you checked out the website: http://davidwees.com/

    He has some pretty useful articles, especially on strategies for formative assessment.

    Full disclosure:
    He’s a colleague of mine so I am biased, but I do get a lot out of what he shares and apply to my own work.

    • Thanks Blue. David is great but I don’t believe he is creating any problem-based lessons. If he is, please list a link to where I can find them.

    • Hello. To me the answer is both yes and no. Clearly these are problems that you can base a lesson around. However they are not of the style that we are including in this search engine. If you are interested in examples of elementary tasks of this style, check out Graham Fletcher’s problems here: http://gfletchy.com/3-act-lessons/.

  4. I was so excited to find this resource that I immediately emailed all of the teachers in my department a link to this post. Then, I realized that I had a double block of Algebra I approaching in 15 minutes and I could use this search tool to find a resource that might raise the engagement level for my students. Sure enough…I typed “graphing quadratic equations” into the search box, and numerous resources appeared. I selected the second hit on “Angry Birds”,and it fit seamlessly into my lesson plan. The students asked such great questions and were able to clearly answer questions about the vertex, x-intercepts, and orientation of the quadratic equations that modeled the paths of the angry bird. Of course, then I had to send out another email to my department ranting and raving about my math rush.

    Thank you!

    • Isn’t it cool when it works out! Glad to hear it was useful for you in a tight situation.

    • Hi Alex. Obviously I love Open Middle, but it doesn’t seem to be a good fit here. This search engine is more for math modeling problems also known as 3-Act Tasks or problem-based lessons. What do you think?

  5. Hi Robert,
    I will be sharing this with my colleagues at school that focus on the Math contents…
    Thanks for a great resource on behalf of all those teacher who need a little more help in the topics area.

    • Hi Ben. I haven’t heard of this but it seems like there are some useful problems there. I’ll add it to the list. Much appreciated!

  6. I LOVE THIS! I’m so excited to have a search engine that will only search for mathematical tasks! I’m sharing it with everyone I know:). Thank you so much, Robert!!

  7. Hi Robert. I love that you did this. It makes it easier to get teachers to try these out. I also have another site – tapintoteenminds.com. He has developed some tasks using the 3-Act format.

  8. Thanks! This is amazing and such a great idea! Is there a way to embed this link into our own sites?

    • Can you explain more about what you mean to “embed this link”? You can put a link to this blog post on your own site, that’s no problem.

  9. Hey! I think this is a great list of resources and so thankful for the list. It has saved me in the last a lot. I am in my grad school class and researching on PBL. I am a little confused how this qualifies has PBL and not just projects or really good math lessons. My research suggests that with PBL the learning is happening through the project and the project is not a activity we tack on at the end. I also read, “While the learning context is common to all groups, the paths may differ considerably—all leading to distinct learning. In project-based learning all students engage in a common project with unclear processes but clearly identified expected outcomes.” Can you speak a little bit about your thoughts on PBL. I am trying to find some math teachers I look up to and follow to help me learn about PBL in a secondary classroom. Please respond or email me at [email protected]

    • Hi Virginia. Thanks for this question. I should be clear that this is a PROBLEM-based search engine and not a PROJECT-based search engine. While the two have similarities, it sounds like you are talking about project based lessons and not what I am focusing on.

      I don’t do a lot with project based learning so unfortunately I’m not a good resource for you there. Sorry! If you want to learn more about problem based learning, you can read more here: http://robertkaplinsky.com/tag/problem-based-learning-2/.

    • Thanks Merryl. I’m not aware of any problems that Youcubed has that would be considered problem-based lessons like 3-act tasks and the ones on my site. If you can point me in the right direction, I’d love to check them out.

    • Hi Danielle. I understand where you’re coming from, but that isn’t a problem for me. You often get what you pay for, and as much as it feels nice to get lessons for free, the Mathalicious team’s full time job is creating high quality lessons for educators. They deserve to be compensated.

      Personally, I prefer to be aware of what’s out there so that I can choose what’s best from me. Sometimes it will be worth paying for.

    • Thanks Sarah. I think this issue is stems from the word “problem” being so broad. Yes, I have looked at those problems, but they aren’t like the 3-act tasks and other problem-based lessons I am looking for with this search engine. I want problems that are more like these: https://robertkaplinsky.com/lessons/

    • Hi Brian. I think this issue is stems from the word “problem” being so broad. Yes, I have looked at those problems, but they aren’t like the 3-act tasks and other problem-based lessons I am looking for with this search engine. I want problems that are more like these: https://robertkaplinsky.com/lessons/

    • Hi Angela. Yes, a few others have suggested it. It’s not a good fit for the kinds of problems I’m referring to (which are more like you’d find on my lessons page or 3-act tasks). Thanks!

    • Thanks Jeff. Those are all great resources. The kinds of problems we’re trying to include here are more real-world or three-act task style problems, so this is not a great fit for this particular search engine.

    • Thanks Jenny. There’s lots of great stuff there. Unfortunately, the kinds of problems we’re trying to include here are more real-world or three-act task style problems, so this is not a great fit for this particular search engine.

  10. What a wonderful one-stop shop for problem solving tasks. I would love to link them all to my site called CURIOSEDY. I wonder if you think Curiosedy could be added to the list as it has open-ended rich tasks as well as multi-step problem solving. Would love your thoughts. Thanks again for this.

    • Thanks for sharing this, Francois. I can see lots of potential in what you’re doing. The kinds of tasks in this search engine (more like 3-act tasks) are a bit different from your approach, but both have value. So it’s not a great fit for this search engine but keep it going as it’ll help other students.

    • Mark definitely has some great resources. Unfortunately they’re not the kinds of problems for this search engine. I’m thinking more like problems with real world context.

    • Thanks for catching that. I guess her site is no longer active. I just went through all of them and updated it accordingly.

    • Thanks Lorna. This is a bit different style of problem than what I’m going for. Ideally, I’m looking for problems that are more contextual without necessarily being a word problem. These are definitely great problems, but a different kind than I’m using with this search engine. Thanks again.

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