Math Inquiry - Learner Agency?

One major question I've been asking myself is how do I build our learner's agentic practices while still covering all the content we need to and engaging our learners?

I've tried a number of approaches lately and feel like I need to nail it down to one or two.  Today's experience left me feeling excited about the progress the kids have been making already.  I took an old favourite - maintenance questions (!!!) and revamped this to be a problem challenge with a group focus.

Taking our name cards and placing students in groups (success - they form these mixed groups without complaint or excluding others) the kids worked their way through the questions posed here, to earn points.  They were hugely motivated to improve and talked through their processes and answers with their collaborators.  Ninety percent of the students were participating in the group effectively and this was evident in the learning demonstrated when the kids shared back at the end.  Most of the groups got to the last question and many completed all the questions successfully.  What was great about the questions was that the progression built on knowledge throughout - so in order to answer question two, question one had to be complete and correct.  These were a great way of building on the kids IKAN gaps as well as exposing those who were working on place value and not fractions, to begin to move into fractions.

When sharing back, we talked about who was challenged by the questions, what they felt they'd learned and the feeling of success.  Many of our more hesitant math learners were contributing in positive ways and demonstrating enthusiasm for math!  Lightbulbs!