This post is brought to you by David Wees. Thanks, David!
Category: Grade 8
Why is this mistake so enticing, and how might you help students avoid it?
[Compare: http://mathmistakes.org/?p=396]
Thanks again to Anna Blinstein for the submission. Follow her! Virtually! Not literally!
Would the student have made this mistake if she were just given to evaluate? If yes, then what’s the misconception. If no, then what’s going on?
Oh, and go check out Chris Robinson’s stuff, and go follow him on twitter.
I’m sitting on a bunch of Khan Academy questions from users that I marked as very interesting. I never posted them, and I feel a little cheap giving them all their own posts. So I figured I’d just dump the whole lot on you all. These questions reveal interesting things about the way these students are thinking. If you think that you’ve got something interesting to add, either on the diagnosis or prescription side of things, dig into the comments below.
The first is a nice probability puzzler. How did this student get 3/8?
I love this conceptual question.
Not sure exactly why I clipped the first question here, but the second question is great. “Why do they call it a limit?”
A good reminder: some vocab is tricky. Why are these two vocabulary words the one that this student confused?
This is a great point from a kid about variable use.
A little bit of context for this next one: we’re talking about protractors here.
Backtracking
What is going through this student’s brain? What would you say to the kid to help out?
Let me know if you’re having trouble reading today’s submission. If image quality continues to be a problem then I’ll experiment with typing the student work up.