LEaDME: Leading Educators and Development in Mathematics Education

I recently had an article published about one of my favourite maths tasks that explores “subtraction as comparison (difference)”. This was published in Prime Number, an excellent mathematics education teacher journal. If you are interested in subscribing to Prime Number, please contact the Mathematical Association of Victoria (MAV) via email at office@mav.vic.edu.au. 

I have attached a copy of my article, ‘Diffy Towers: Exploring subtraction as comparison’ to this blog post. In the article, I share content knowledge concerning the types of subtraction, how to play ‘Diffy towers’, as well as ways that the task can be modified to support differentiation, including the use of sentence frames to faciliate student talk when engaging with the task.

If you use Diffy Towers in your classroom, or if you are a mathematics leader and you use this with teachers in a professional learning opportunity, I would love to hear how you and your students (or teachers) engaged with the task. Like I said, it is one of my favourites, and I hope it becomes one of yours, too! A special thank you goes to the Prime Number Team at the MAV, especially James Russo, the Editor of Prime Number.

Twitter: @MattSextonACU

Email me: leadmemaths@gmail.com

Sexton (2019). Diffy towers. Prime Number, 34(3), 24-27.