another pesky example

From: Mike Cole (mcole@weber.ucsd.edu)
Date: Sun Nov 04 2001 - 09:37:07 PST


Here is a briefer, less complex, description from a different community
college student during a homework helping part of their activity at a
different site from the last one (an elementary school). I find it
interesting as an example of child change in interaction. What difference
would it make if it were analyzed by Bruner, Vygotsky, or Piaget-- or bb
or mc?!
mike

----
 They
were doing multiplication problems, which is the first time I have seen multiplication homework
at 5D. I was worried at first because mosies is the same kid I problems last week with adding
and subtracting. An example of the problems they had is: There was a picture of three jackets
with 4 buttons on each of them. The question were as follows:

How many buttons? 4 How many jackets? 3 How many buttons all together? 12

At first I had to start by actually counting the buttons to get 12 and then showing them that by multiplying you can get 12 without counting all of them. Jodie picked up on this right away, but I had to do every problem with Mosies. I just talked him through it. He was just guessing any number so I knew he didn't understand what we were doing. He wrote down numbers because he copied them from Jodie. By the last problem he was starting to figure it out, but without my help I don't think that he could do it alone. I foresee him having math problems in the future if he doesn't get the right amount of support now, so lets try to help him out!



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