Low Floor, High Ceiling - Math Coach Attempts Math Art

How often do we (as teachers) hear about something that sounds pretty great, but then we can't picture how it should fit in with all of the other great stuff that we do?  

Last week, I had the opportunity to hear David MacAulay (illustrator and author of visual feasts such as The Way Things Work) speak, and he said something that resonated with me. 

In order to really see something, I need to draw it.

 Well, I'm no David MacAulay, but I thought I'd give it a try... So, for a training session yesterday, I made this poster to explain the difference between high floor, low ceiling and low floor, high ceiling math activities and questions:

Then, I created a visual of what integrating low floor, high ceiling activities into a math class could look like.  

I based this on my own experiences threading these problems into my teaching, but I tried to build it bigger and better.   Then, I made it into a "Thinglink" to add some depth to it. Check it out below (here's a link in case you can't see the "thing").  Each information "i" should be clickable and will provide a little more information about the parts. 

This isn't the only way to do it though.  It's just one way.  How would you improve it?  Thoughts?  Questions?  Comments?  Please send them in... edorsey@u32.org.

Meanwhile, here are some resources I created to analyze and revise our questions and see here for my original post on how to do a low floor, high ceiling makeover.  

Hope you enjoy!