Student Error Patterns – MA318 Take-home exam

First: Some Notes

1. Students seldom make mistakes on purpose.

2. Often students will simply not understand a concept or will misunderstand a process or algorithm. They will develop their own “faulty” or “buggy” algorithms and use them consistently.

3. A good teacher will work to discover his or her students’ faulty algorithms and correct them, before they become embedded into the students’ long term memory.

4. Two major types of misunderstanding:

Conceptual – student doesn’t understand BIG ideas such as definitions, place value or regrouping, or hasn’t mastered basic facts.

Procedural – student either does algorithm steps out of order, forgets steps, or confuses steps from two different algorithms.

Worth 20 points of your final exam

Due by Monday, May 7 by 5:00 in Drop Box or as an e-mail attachment to me.

On the handout there are examples of various, documented student error patterns for fractions, decimals and other types of numbers we have studied.

1. Quickly evaluate the 24 student work samples. Try to determine the error pattern each sample exhibits. You will not turn this part in, but you may wish to take notes as you go through. (Note: the samples are not uniformly numbered, but there are 24 different samples. They are identified by a student name or a paper number, so use those identifiers in your paper you turn in.)

2. You should choose 5 samples. Each sample must be from a different page of the handout. For each of the five, do the following on your own paper, not the handout. You will turn in a typed paper with your analysis of the error patterns for the 5 samples you have chosen.

a. Identify the work sample you are working with by writing either the child’s name or the paper number. Then describe the error pattern the student is using – in other words, describe his/her buggy algorithm.

b. Make an educated guess about whether this error is conceptual or procedural (using the information given above) and give a short reason why you believe this.

c. For each sample write up 2 or 3 ideas that you would use to re-teach the concept the student isn’t understanding. This might consist of using manipulatives, alternative algorithms, a different kind of paper on which to do the work, or other methods. Don’t just say “Re-teach the concept”.

d. The format for the assignment should look like this:

1. Name of student work sample

2. Description of the error pattern

3. Determination of conceptual or procedural type of error

4. Short description of 1st re-teaching idea.

5. Short description of 2nd re-teaching idea.

6. An additional re-teaching idea if you have another. (optional)

e. Upload the completed analysis to the course Dropbox or e-mail it to me with the subject line MA318 – error pattern analysis (YOUR NAME).