Mathematical Tasks

I found the Smith and Stein article to be interesting on selecting mathematical tasks.  The article stressed that it is important to begin with a task that has the ability to engage students at a high level in order to help their thinking and problem solving skills.  The task that you select should match the goals that you have for your student learning.  This makes me wonder about the math tasks that I see my Kindergarten students complete in the placement that I am in.  The only two math tasks that I have seen them complete is learning to write their numbers and matching coins up with the correct value.  I know the school that I am in has a primarily language arts based curriculum, but I'm wondering if having the kids write their numbers matches the goals that my teacher has for math learning.  I've seen that a couple of the kids know how to do this really well, and could use a different task that uses more thinking and reasoning.  Matching coins up with the correct money value is really only memorization and does not require any higher level thinking.  According to the article, this would be considered a lower level demand because it involves producing previously learned facts to memory.  Also, the Kabiri and Smith article really made me think when it said that the students that displayed the most persistence or interesting solutions were not necessarily the best students.  I think it is important when planning lessons to think about all of the students in your class.  Thinking about whether you have students who are above the concept you are trying to teach and students who are below the concept that you are teaching.  Engaging all of your students really is the ultimate goal and having the most approaches or solutions to a problem really opens that up.