Casey Droste 2-13 Student Blog

This assignment is a homework that was returned today, it was a review of what we learned about last week.  We have been focusing on Ratios and Unit Rates with the students for the past week and we still are this week.  We have progressed into word problems that give a lot of information and the students have to figure out the unit rate for most things and compare them.  There is a pattern of division that the students are expected/hoped to see when doing these unit rate problems.

This particular side of the worksheet focuses on using tables to explore equivalent rations and rates.  The goal for numbers 1-8 is that students will be able to understand what equivalent ratios are and how to make them in actuality this is just testing their knowledge of these points because they have already learned it so the goal would be that students are able to show they have the knowledge of what equivalent ratios are.  The student easily understands that he first writes the ratio in the table and then he is multiplying these numbers by 2, 3, 4, 5.  For the bottom numbers it looks like most of his math is correct but when you look closer it seems he had some issues sticking to the pattern on both the top and the bottom.  For number 8 instead of multiplying 2 x 3 for his third box he just did 4 x 2 but on the top he did 7 x 3.  On number 1 he didn’t do 4 x 3 but either 4 x 4 or 8 x 2 yet on the bottom he did 7 x 3. 

Although this part of the worksheet seems like repetition I would not have been able to see what this student was doing wrong in some spots.

I think that this student is not realizing the connection between the top and the bottom in some of these, especially with 2s and 4s but he does great with 7s.  I think an easy way to help him would be to set up a table with the first ratio filled in and then on the top of each new column have the number he should multiply each by, covering up the previous number so he does not get confused and have him only look at the original ratio.  I do not even think my teacher noticed that he was doing these problems wrong because he did not get a red circle on any of them.  This is an easy oversight but something that will affect his learning and outcome on further work so if we can help him fix this now that would be great.