Student Work Blog 3/26

This week my students took a test based on subtraction. As you can probably tell, the last three or four posts I have uploaded have dealt with double digit subtraction. This is the test my teacher just recently gave her class, and this in particular is a photo taken of the a graded test. The students had to solve these subtraction problems using different methods. This particular student did a fairly good job on the first page. When he was supposed to subtract and fill in the empty boxes, he had no issue. He also did a great job with counting backwards and subtracting using photos of the base ten cubes. However, when it game to specifying if he had to regroup and work on word problems, it was clear that he began to struggle.
The first problem he struggled with was 72-3. He realized that he needed to re-group, but when asked "How many tens and ones are left?" he said 7 tens and 9 ones. I have looked at this particular problem and realized that he knew he had to re-group. What he forgot to do, however, was change the 7 tens to 6 tens, because he got the correct number for the ones place. He had no issue with the first question in this format, but that was probably because he did not have to re-group.
For the word problem, this student solved the problem correctly. He just did not fill in the boxes to show the addition problem he completed. It was clear that he did the problem mentally, but he must have either forgot to fill out the box or just could not figure out how to put it into writing. I don't really like the format of this test, mainly because it is directly out of their math book. The students have been working on this exact same format on every worksheet, so the teacher knew what struggles her students were having. Forgetting or choosing not to fill out the boxes is a common occurrence with this type of worksheet, so I think that if my Mentor Teacher would have written her own test, catering to these struggles, the students may have had an easier time. I also noticed that she would randomly hand these tests out to students during free time. This was only if they had not finished their test, but she didn't try to seclude these students away from others, so they were asking their classmates for help. I think that she should have had them work in a particular corner of the room, or tried to have them do it during their lunch or recess time to help them focus.