This week I brought in one of my students bar graphs homework. Normally this student does a good job on their math homework, getting them all right with the exception of one or two problems.
However, this time the student got all the answers wrong and was asked to re-do the assignment.
The graph was not a standard bar graph as the bars normally grow vertically these bars went horizontally across the graph. The other difficulty I think the student had with the graph was that they did not read the questions clear enough. When it asked to compare two groups of months they wrote the month that had the most, they did not add the amounts for the two groups.
When the student re-did the worksheet they ended up getting all the answers correct. When I handed back the worksheet I asked the student why they think they got them all wrong the first time and they said they did not take their time doing their homework and because of this did not read the graph clearly or the directions. So, in this case I now know that this was just a matter of time that the student had to complete the homework and not the lack of the skill or knowledge to complete it.
Also it is good that you asked the student to clarify what they were thinking / why they made their mistakes, you might want to look more closely and follow up to see what the student truly does understand, as the way the student approaches the work may be related to what he understands about it / how confident he is in his understanding.
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