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These resources have been reviewed and selected by STEM Learning’s team of education specialists for factual accuracy and relevance to teaching STEM subjects in UK schools.

Shelves

This task is designed to assess how well students understand proportional reasoning and how it relates to graphs.

The task is set in the context of making shelves by using planks of wood supported by three bricks at each end. Students investigate both the materials and costs involved for making different numbers of shelves. The work is then related to graphs, with students identifying what a number of plots represent in the context of the problem.

This task is from the Mathematics Assessment Resource Service, a collaboration between UC Berkeley and the Shell Centre team at the University of Nottingham. A full rubric is given for the task, together with examples of student work and suggestions for helping students overcome misconceptions. Further information on the collection is given here.

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