Students today continued working on puzzles for the promotion of critical thinking. We began with a writing exercise based on yesterday's puzzle (see below). Effective responses included:

• reference to a consistent use of a modified version of the coordinate system (X-axis and Y-axis);
• mention of the central square as the starting figure'
• an explanation that the sides of the square expand outward along the X- or Y-axis;
• an explanation that the sides of the square also extend so that the sides become gradually longer; and
• mention of the fact that the diagonal consists of increasingly large squares.

Afterward, students worked on a much harder puzzle that required a great deal of collaboration and discussion to solve:

Once we solved it, students began working on their own puzzles, which they will share tomorrow.