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MTH 610
classroom, students range in their problem solving abilities from just knowing the
share out their thinking. For this particular case study, I chose my student, who
actively participates and communicates his thinking in whole group, but often,
one-on-one, it is evident that procedures and strategies of how to solve given content
is understood, as anchor charts are often referred back to; however, there is some
disconnect when having to activate his knowledge on his own. This student is
Raheem (a pseudonym).
For the past few weeks, we have been learning about place value. Within this
broad umbrella, the following topics are included as the raindrops: rounding up to
the thousands place, identifying the value of given digits and manipulatives,
sequencing numbers, and writing numbers in three forms- standard, written (word),
and expanded form. While working on his practice, I noticed that Raheem needed
more guiding questions, so I pulled him to my small group table to work with him
more closely. Initially, I thought it was confidence issue by the inflections in his
voice being that of an unsure tone, but being close to the correct solution. However, I
noticed otherwise at the small group table when changing his practice and giving him
a FCPS assessment question from the Countys online assessment resource, Horizon.
It was here that Raheem had to solve the following problem: A deli made 1,743
sandwiches in one week. What is that number rounded to the nearest hundred
sandwiches?
When solving the Horizon problem, an answer was immediately written. Without
mathematicians never give up and he took a second look followed by making this
statement, I count by tens and writing the number 1,753. This was evident that the
counting strategy of counting by ten was used, showing some rigor in his ability to
think mathematically. To better guide his thinking towards base-tens and identifying
when and how to round, I had Raheem label each digits place value. Here, Raheem
was proficient and knew the procedures of how to label each place value. However,
he really didnt understand their values. Subsequently, I asked him, If you drew a
number line, which hundreds would 1,753 be closest to? He looked puzzled,
thought about it, and then communicated what he did, I counted ten more because
Im rounding to the nearest ten. This showed me that he knew where to look, which
is to the right of the rounding place, to know when to round, but the how was not
understood- he rounded up and increased the wrong digit by one (wrote 1,753
opposed to 1,800).
When reflecting on chapter 4 in our class text, Young Mathematicians At Work:
next steps for reteaching place value to Raheem. Unitizing is cited as the heart or
focal point of place value, as Critical addition and subtraction strategies in relation to
place value are adding or removing units to get to the next ten (p75). To move my
student into the more concrete realm of thinking, more exposure to what rounding
up or rounding down visually looks like is needed. I plan to use more number
lines to help Raheem identify the closet benchmarks when rounding and using
manipulates to shown that when rounding up, you are really estimating and
regrouping- skills that will be revisited in proceeding units and in the higher grades.
locate values on a number line, use the spacing in-between entire benchmark, and
visually check his solution to see if it makes sense. In turn, the chapter too highlights
practice problem, more powerful connections and opportunities to connect with the
more successful and meaningful year in math. Number lines are manipulatives that
reappear not only when rounding, but in our next unit, adding and subtracting, and
units thereafter. When using the number line and manipulatives, Raheem will move
from his comfort zone of implementing the counting strategy to more rigorous
strategies, to include: derived fact strategy. In turn, more patterns in numbers will be
seen. This will help Raheem make connections and become more fluent in his
mental math string (Fosnot & Dolk, p138) and math string in general.