spontaneously creating a zoped

From: Mike Cole (mcole@weber.ucsd.edu)
Date: Sat Feb 09 2002 - 08:35:36 PST


Dear Colleagues,

Spontaneous zoped creation.
This fragment from a student tutor strikes me as a clear embodiment
of a clever way of creating a zoped for a student. This student
first finished all his homework with double digit addition, but
had difficulty when given a sum and one of its two components. This
student then reports the following:
delete now if uninterested)
mike
---------
 As we sat down Ramiro took out a math worksheet that he had to finish fo
r homework. It was basic addition with double digits. For the first section he
 seemed to have the hang of it for he didnM-^Rt ask me for help and seemed to be
 solving them quite easily. I did notice that he was thinking out loud while so
lving the problem. For example, he would say the operations of the problem, of
how a number plus another added up to a sum and how you had to carry over the on
e and so on. However, when he finished the first section, he stopped and said,
M-^SNow, I need help on this section,M-^T referring to the last section of his h
omework assignment. This part gave a number and the sum and the object was to f
ind the second number which would make the given sum. I asked Ramiro if he had
any ideas on how to solve this and he gave me a blank look and said that he didn
M-^Rt. I thought for a bit on what the best way might be to explain this to him
. To my luck, there was a box of markers next t!
o me so I took out five markers and set them on the table in front of him. I se
parated them into two and three markers. I asked Ramiro, if I had 5 markers, an
d took out two, how many would I have left? He answered with three. But he did
nM-^Rt have a look of revelation on his face or anything so I could tell that he
 didnM-^Rt see the connection between that example and the math problem on the w
orksheet. So then I tried to word it better and then asked, him if I had two ma
rkers and needed to get five, how many would I need to get? He answered with th
ree. I asked him what he did and he answered that he just took two away from fi
ve. I pointed to the math problem on the paper and showed him how it was just l
ike that problem. I think he got it because he then began to try the problem on
 the worksheet with the method we tried with the simpler problem. Every time he
 solved a problem, he would look at me for approval to see if he did it right.
Soon enough, Ramiro had finished th!
e entire set. He then packed his things and left.



This archive was generated by hypermail 2b29 : Fri Mar 01 2002 - 01:00:19 PST