Thanks to everyone who took time to submit tasks to our last contest! We would like to announce the second round of our Standards Task Writing Contest beginning Monday, January 2nd, 2012. We have two themes this week; the first stems from our first contest’s theme of Functions. We had several strong tasks submitted for some of the 7-8 function standards (we’ll announce the winners when their tasks are published)  and would like to continue the theme with the following high school standards:

• F.IF.4
• F.IF.5
• F.IF.6

The new theme for this week is focused on Expressions and Equations and we recommend reading the progressions document for 6 – 8 as you think about the task you would like to submit. People are invited to submit tasks for these specific standards:

• 6.EE.9
• 7.EE.3
• 8.EE.8
• A.CED (there are four standards under this heading)

Authors of tasks selected for inclusion in the Illustrative Mathematics task bank will receive $200 per task, which must be emailed by Monday, January 9th, 2012 midnight in your local time zone to illustrativemathematics@gmail.com with subject line “Submission for Illustrative Mathematics Task Writing Contest Jan 2 – Jan 9, 2012.” If your task is accepted, we will notify you the week following the deadline. We may ask you to work with us to revise the task before we accept it. People may submit multiple tasks. Any questions about the contest should be sent to the same email address with subject line “Question about Illustrative Mathematics Task Writing Contest Jan 2 – Jan 9, 2012.”

How it Should Look

The Illustrative Mathematics team would like to encourage participants to review some of the tasks already published on the website (once you follow this link, click on e.g. K-8 Content Standards with Illustrations) for standards 6.RP (Shirt Sale), 7.RP (Tax and Tip), and F.BF (Kimi and Jordan) to get an idea for how tasks should look. Because the tasks are entered into the database in a particular way, the format is important. Also keep in mind that all task submissions must include at least one complete solution; here is a word_template that shows the fields that need to be included. We will give extra consideration to tasks written by pairs or teams of people, tasks that have natural connections to other tasks related to this stream, and tasks with insightful commentary. Please submit tasks in word format or LaTeX, along with a pdf if possible. To learn more about what makes a good mathematical task, read this article by Kristin Umland.

We look forward to another great set of tasks!