Helen Webb

Student Work Analysis 1

The student recognizes the difference in value between dimes and pennies. She knows
that dimes represent ten cents and that pennies are one cent each. In her picture, she shows that
two dimes represent 20 cents and that in order to reach 26 cents, one would need 6 pennies. She
highlighted the pair of circles which each represent 10, then an arrow to a 2 in the tens place.
Then she circled the remaining 6 coins, with an arrow to a 6 in the ones place. She has mentally
identified the value of each coin, and has put them in the right order.
She knows that even though the number of coins is the same between her picture and the
problem, the coins in the problem do not equal 26 cents. She has a basic understanding of place
value, and that quantity is not always represented by countable objects. Because of her writing it
is difficult to determine that the 2 circles which represent dimes are marked with a D and the
pennies with a p. It is possible that she is properly labeling them and that her Ps and Ds
are just very similar. I may ask the student to name the letters she marked on the page.
In her text however, she writes but then it still does not make 26 cents. So you got 8 cents. This
leads me to think that she understands that the coins presented in the problem are indeed
incorrect.
The next step I would take with this student is to check for understanding of reversibility and
trading. I would ask her how she would make the 26 cents change required in the problem.
Would she suggest 26 pennies? Would she suggest 2 dimes and 6 pennies? Does she understand
that these two sets of coins are equivalent? If she did understand these questions, I would then
practice trading with physical coins and ask her to make change for different amounts of money
spent. Could she generalize this understanding in a number of different contexts?