Behrman Week 6 Student Work

            This week in math our students have been working with representing numbers in different ways. Students filled out a chart that represented the number using digits, writing it out with the number words, drawing a picture of it using base ten blocks, and then, ultimately, if the number was even or odd. After completing this half of the worksheet, they were given a multitude of numbers to cut out and then sort into groups of even and odd. I thought that the even and odd number sort would have been the easier part of the worksheet for them, since they seemed to have a pretty good grasp on it. However, when students worked with these two and three-digit numbers, confusion set in. When I talked with a student about his completed work, I noticed a mixture of even and odd numbers within each of the two groups. I asked him about his work and he told me that 27 was even because it has a two.
          What my conversation with this student revealed was that my students don't understand the necessity of looking at the ones place to determine if a number is even or odd. Even though we have talked multiple times about how we know that 10 is an even number (we use our two hands and group our fingers to show that each one has a partner), it became apparent that this concept gets lost when looking at a two-digit number.
           One way to advance this student's understanding of determining an even or odd number could involve having students build the number 27 (and other numbers, both even and odd) using Unifix cubes instead of the base ten blocks. I think that having students physically build a rod of ten would help them understand that they know it is an even number and don't need to count it to see if each cube has a partner; they just need to count the number of ones they have left over. A second possible option could be having a discussion with the student and presenting him with number pairs, such as 52 and 22 and asking him to decide if the numbers are even or odd. Then, 43 and 13 and continuing the discussion. By including the use of specific numbers and comparing them by discussing and also having hands-on representations of the numbers, I feel that I could learn a great deal about this students's understanding and possibly clear up some misconceptions.