For all the rich maths tasks and probing questions in this series, and for the pedagogy behind the concept, please visit the Probing Maths Questions Index page.

At the start of October, I put a plea out for maths teachers to try out the “Choose 3 Numbers” activity, and try to come up with as many probing questions / rich, interesting lines of inquiry for students to pursue. This is all part of my view that effective differentiation does not necessarily mean giving students different tasks to do, but challenging them to think about the same task in different ways.

Before I get onto the wonderful questions and suggestions I received, I must start with an apology. Mike Ollerton contacted me to say that he came up with the “Choose 3 Numbers” idea whilst on a train journey and wrote about it on his lovely blog here. I was told about the activity by a colleague on a maths course earlier in the year, and was not aware that Mike had invented it, so I can only apologise for not giving him the due credit he deserves for creating what has rapidly become one of my favourite maths activities of all time. Many apologies, Mike.

Now, the response on the blog to my plea for questions was not exactly overwhelming (thank you to Dan!), but I was fortunate enough to deliver a workshop to a lovely bunch of teachers in Sheffield recently, and in the space of a frantic 20 minutes, they came up with some absolutely phenomenal suggestions. I have added these to a few of my own, and put them together in the following document:

Choose 3 Numbers Probing Questions

Dan Rodriguez Clarke has also kindly created the following page on his website that allows you to randomly generate sets of numbers to investigate. Once again, thank you Dan!

I will be launching my 3rd Probing Questions activity at the start of November, so stay tuned!