What’s something that interests you about this student’s work?
Another quality submission from John Weisenfeld.
Category: Algebra 1
How would you help this student become sensitive to this language?
Another quality submission from John Weisenfeld.
Would the student have made this mistake if she were just given 
Oh, and go check out Chris Robinson’s stuff, and go follow him on twitter.
What does the kid think the distributive property is?
It’s easy to say: “Well, I’d avoid this mistake in my class by teaching the distributive property correctly.” Well, what’s the wrong way to teach this thing, then? What’s the smartest possible way to teach this, and still end up with your kids making that mistake?
After you’re done writing an awesome comment to this post, go check out Josh Weisenfeld’s blog. He spotted and submitted this gem of a mistake.
How did this happen? How might you help?
Say something intelligent about this bit of student work.
Say something smart about this in the comments. When you’re done, go check out the blog from whence this mistake came.
Here are two classic mistakes:
Whenever I see a mistake that recurs at all different levels, and with all different students, I wonder: what makes this mistake so attractive? What’s the misconception? And what can we do about it?
Say something smart in the comments, and then go check out this post from Fawn Nguyen.
What’s the mistake? Where’d it come from? How would you help?
When you’re done thinking about that, go check out where the mistake came from.
What does this mistake reveal about the kid’s thinking? How would you take the kid’s thinking to the next level?