Markert-Student Work Blog

This week my students have been working on addition and subtraction. We have been working on the idea of “hopping up” and “hopping back.” The students have been using the number line to demonstrate answering word problems and number models. The students have been using the number line to also show their thinking and demonstrate their personal understanding of addition and subtraction.  We have been doing a combination of all class examples and also individual work. The students have overall demonstrated a strong understanding for this concept. They are able to show the hops on the number and also write the number model most of the time accurately. One area that they have been struggling with in terms of the number model is the addition or subtraction sign. Sometimes the students mix up which one to use even if they demonstrated “hopping up” or “hopping back” correctly. I believe this is due to a lack of understanding of what the sign actually means. This may come with time and practice to familiarize themselves with these symbols.

Even though the students have been working with the number line, counting by 5’s and counting by 2’s there still is some confusion on how to show this. Today I noticed while walking around the room that the students were having a difficult time demonstrating hops on a number line to show counting by 2’s, counting 5’s and counting by 10’s. Many of the students did not know where to start or what the question entailed. Even after explaining to the students what the question is asking for many students were just making hops on the number line. I believe that maybe the students are not use to showing counts by 2’s, 5’s, and 10’s. If you ask any student in my class they are able to tell you counts of these numbers but something about showing their understanding of this proves difficult. One student I sat down beside him and asked “ Sam*, can you count by 2’s for me?” He replied counting by 2’s all the way to 20 (number line ended at 20.) When I asked him to then show the hops he immediately became confused. I am wondering if they were just not use to showing their understanding of this or if consistent hops made things confusing for them. I believe one way this could become a higher-level task is by asking the students to explain why they made hops the way they did. This would allow the teacher to see what they are thinking and where the confusion lies. Since this was just a workbook page even having the student verbally explain their thinking about the problem would be beneficial and informative. To me, it seemed that the students just did not understand what to do but maybe they had thinking behind it. It could also help me explain to them where an error may occur. I also think it would be beneficial to do a few examples of these types of questions on the whiteboard prior to the worksheet to help any misconceptions that may occur simply by not understanding the problem.