All 3 of these indicate that the student has seen a pattern and is trying to remember that pattern – number sense be damned. I think that the most frustrating one to me is the second one. I would have to look the student in the eye and ask the student to place 5.44444… somewhere on a number line after asking the student to place 6/11 on a number line. I sure hope that this would induce some sort of ‘a-ha’ insight that the given answer is incorrect. Correcting the process should be next, rather than simply correcting the answer. Congratulate the student for following a process correctly, but concentrate on developing some sort of self-check process along the way.
One reply on “Converting decimals to fractions”
All 3 of these indicate that the student has seen a pattern and is trying to remember that pattern – number sense be damned. I think that the most frustrating one to me is the second one. I would have to look the student in the eye and ask the student to place 5.44444… somewhere on a number line after asking the student to place 6/11 on a number line. I sure hope that this would induce some sort of ‘a-ha’ insight that the given answer is incorrect. Correcting the process should be next, rather than simply correcting the answer. Congratulate the student for following a process correctly, but concentrate on developing some sort of self-check process along the way.