I’ve been reading some constructivist stuff lately, so…
What resources does this student have for refining their understanding of fractions?
(Thanks for the submission, Dionn!)
Category Archives: Grade 5
Always, sometimes or never true: “A parallelogram is a rhombus.”
“A square is never a rectangle.”
The question below asked kids to state whether the given sentence is always, sometimes or never true. Then, they were asked to justify their response.
Suppose someone said this to you. How would you respond?
Many thanks to Tina for the submission!
Exponents Mistake from Middle School
What makes this mistake so common?
Thanks to Cathy Campbell for the student work!
Money
Let’s not even call this a mistake quite yet. What does this answer reveal about what the kid knows?
Plotting Points
Thanks to Andy Zsiga for the submissions. He’s wondering whether anyone has perspective on why students would graph several points correctly, and then mess up the point that contains a zero as one of its coordinates.
Anyone have a theory?
The Distributive Property of Fractions
See the title of the post.
What is the significance of this mistake? Say something smart about this piece of student work in the comments.
Division by 1/4
Above are three different answers to 4 divided by 1/4. What understanding stands behind each of those wrong answers? How do you teach division by fractions?
Division by Zero
5 divided by 0 is 0.
Thoughts?
Related: http://rationalexpressions.blogspot.com/2012/11/how-not-to-teach-it-division-by-zero.html
Classic Mistakes: Adding Fractions
I arbitrarily designate some mistakes to be “classics,” and this here is one of them.
No need to identify the mistake. It’s right there. But let’s get some wisdom in the comments. What is the significance of this mistake? Does knowing that this mistake is common change the way that you do (or should) teach?
[I didn't exactly know how to tag this post, but it's from a 9th grade classroom. For CCSS I tagged 5th grade.]