Who’s got a theory for which shapes get circled?
Thanks to Professor Danielson for the submission.
Category: Elementary School
What’s the fastest way to help this 9th grade student?
How did this kid come to believe in this algorithm?
Thanks to Amy Burk for the submission.
How do you teach kids to add numbers? Does it help kids avoid this mistake?
Thanks to Tom Fleming for the submission.
(The pretty, blue script is a transcription of the pretty, black script.)
What’s going on here? Is this kid going to do OK in 1st grade? What will the 1st grade teacher have to work with?
Thanks to Christopher Danielson for the submission.
This is a snapshot of a book by Robert Ashlock, Error Patterns in Computation.
Penny for your thoughts in the comments. How does a book like that relate to a blog like this?
Also, jump in if you have anything interesting to say about this sort of fractions error.
From the submitter:
Students were presented with the photo of the bowl of lilikoi and the story: Brayden and Caelyn picked lilikoi. There were 13 lilikoi in the bowl. Caelyn picked 5 lilikoi. How many lilikoi did Brayden pick? The second photo shows student predictions. If a student changed their mind, we crossed out their previous prediction and wrote the new one.
Give a theory as to why students answered 13 before answering 5 (or 8).
Thanks to Mitzi Hasegawa for the excellent submission.
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.
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?