I am starting an afterschool math
club to help students who are in need of extra support. This past week I gave another pre-assessment
to see what students knew about addition, subtraction, and multiplication. The reason I tested these specific areas was
because their NWEA standardized test scores fell below the “meets” category,
putting them below where they need to be at the beginning of fourth grade in
these areas of math.
One question on my pre-assessment
asked the students to write a multiplication and addition sentence for an array
that had four rows of 7. One of my students wrote the multiplication sentence
as 4x7=28. Her addition sentence was 4+7=11.
Although her multiplication
sentence matched the array, her addition sentence held misconceptions that
intrigued me. She could have thought she
was supposed to use the 4 and 7 to represent a multiplication sentence and an
addition sentence, not recognizing she was supposed to end with a product of 28
for both. This also tells me she may
have a misconception with skip counting since she was not able to write
7+7+7+7=28. This shows me she knows her
multiplication facts, since her 4x7=28.
She also recognized the correct number of rows and items in each row.
When working with her, I think it
will be important to ask her to skip count by various multiples. This will show me whether or not she
understands that multiplication is repeated addition or has simply memorized
her multiplication facts.
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