Student Work #5

For my weekly blog of student work I conducted the Strange Rulers task that we had done within the first few weeks of class. I chose to conduct this task with one of the middle level math students who is also an English Language Learner. The reason I chose him for this task was because I wanted to see his way of thinking when it came to measurement and to see what his reasoning would be because he isn't an native English speaker.

To begin I placed the Strange Rulers sheet in front of him. I then asked him which of the rulers he thought we could not use. He placed an x next to the rulers that he felt could not be used for measuring. I then asked him to explain to me why we would not be able to use the rulers that he placed an x next to.

• For Ruler A, he explained to me that we cannot use this ruler because it goes from 0 to 5. When I asked if this was because rulers must go from 0 to 1 he said yes. 
• For Ruler D, he explained that there was no middle line. When I asked what he meant by middle line he pointed to the space found between 1 and 2.  
• For Ruler D, he said "Yes, we can use that one because it has middle lines."
• For Ruler F and G, he said "No, cause the numbers are not right."
• For Ruler I, he said that there was no middle half. 
• For ruler J, he said originally said no we could not use this ruler but then changed his answer to "Yes, because they have space middle things and half things."
• For Ruler K, he said "The same as I." 
• For Ruler M, he said "It's a tricky one that one, I think... I don't know. I guess no because there should be numbers and half spaces. When I asked about the shape he said "It's weird."

After he explained to me which of the rulers could not be used we went through each of the rulers the he said could be used and gave me his reasonings as to why.

• For Ruler B, he said that we can use it because the numbers go up by one and the spaces are even. 
• For Ruler C, he said "The same."
• For Ruler E, "Yes, because it has a middle line."
• For Ruler H, he originally said no, but changed his answer to yes saying that "It has those things..." while pointing to the fractions between the whole numbers.
• For Ruler L, he said  "I think yes, because they have a half and they have a middle part."

I was rather surprised that although the majority of his reasonings as to why a majority of the rulers wouldn't work was because they were not evenly spaced or that there were no middle lines but he thought that Ruler L would work because it has "a half and a middle part." I understand what he means by middle line but I was not 100% sure what he meant by half. When I asked him what exactly that meant, he showed me what I understood to be the same definition of half (which is equally spaced lines so that one line between two others marks half). Although he is an ELL, I don't believe that affected his responses as much as I had anticipated it to. If I were to have chosen one of the lower math ELL students perhaps they would have had more of an issue with this task.