Classroom-Ready Rich Math Tasks, Grades K-1: Engaging Students in Doing Math: Corwin Mathematics Series

This book’s title reveals its promise. Classroom-Ready Rich Math Tasks offers teachers an abundant collection of practical challenges for engaging their students in building mathematical fluency and developing strategic reasoning—exactly what all the Mathematics Standards expect.

This book is exactly what every K–1 teacher needs! The 56 tasks are engaging, easily implemented, and most important, ‘classroom ready.’ The instructional strategies presented in the beginning chapters and the reflections emphasized in the last chapter provide the appropriate foundation for teachers of young children. As an experienced K–1 teacher, I guarantee that I would use the ideas presented and would encourage others to do so.

As a district math leader, I appreciate this series because I know that any task my teachers choose will be high quality. I also appreciate the research-informed coaching provided in the first few chapters that will guide my teachers through selecting, planning, and implementing tasks to maximize their potential.



The core of great math teaching is the high-quality task, brought to life through rich interactions. These tasks must be engaging and both mathematically and pedagogically generative—of interesting content and mathematical processes and practices. This valuable book is filled with such tasks, as well as guidance in planning and implementing them and materials for maximum enjoyment and benefit for teachers and their students.

I highly recommend this book, which provides a research-based framework for engaging in rich tasks that are connected to and build on previous mathematical understanding, relevant contexts, and students’ experiences and resources, as well as connecting to mathematics teaching practice. The high cognitively demanding tasks included support the development of important mathematics norms, practices, and concepts.

This book answers the often-asked question, ‘Where can I find good tasks?’ The authors have assembled a collection of rich mathematical tasks and provided guidance on how to plan and implement lessons around them in ways that will support opportunities for students to learn mathematics with understanding. This book is a game changer for kindergarten and first-grade teachers who want their students to do math!

Finding the right task that invites young learners to think and reason mathematically isn’t always easy. This impressive book offers various high-quality tasks and addresses planning and implementation considerations. It is an invaluable resource for everyone who strives to provide worthwhile learning experiences for kindergarten and first-grade mathematicians!

By integrating the latest research with a powerful teacher voice, the authors have written a must-read for every teacher of mathematics who wants their students to have a more motivating and powerful classroom experience. But the authors don’t simply argue that teachers include high-cognitive demand tasks in their teaching—they take the next steps and actually demonstrate how to plan for, implement, and support these tasks so each student can authentically engage in doing mathematics!

Classroom-Ready Rich Math Tasks, Grades K–1 is an excellent resource for teachers, teacher educators, and professional development providers who want to engage students in high-level, cognitively demanding mathematics tasks. The book does an excellent job of explaining the why and the how of implementing doing mathematics tasks. To top it off, this book has a treasure trove of rich mathematics tasks for teachers to choose from.

This book is designed explicitly to support teachers as they reflect on their math teaching practice either individually—or in collaboration with colleagues. Not only does it pull together the essential research connected to planning, setup, and implementation of high-cognitive-demand tasks, it also helps them to implement a full, ready-made collection of tasks, and then eventually move to selecting, adapting, and creating tasks on their own.

Detailed plans for helping elementary students experience deep mathematical learning 

The 56 mathematical tasks in this guide will challenge your youngest students to do deep problem-based learning. These ready-to-implement tasks connect concepts, skills, and practices and encourage students to reason, problem-solve, discuss, explore, justify, monitor their own thinking, and connect the mathematics they know to new situations. In other words, these tasks allow students to truly do mathematics! Written with a strengths-based lens, this guide includes:

• Complete task-based lessons, referencing mathematics standards and practices, vocabulary, and materials 
• Downloadable planning tools, student resource pages, and thoughtful questions, and formative assessment prompts
• Guidance on preparing, launching, facilitating, and reflecting on each task
• Notes on access and equity, focusing on students’ strengths, productive struggle, and distance or alternative learning environments.