Error Analysis

 

Mistakes are made on an everyday basis, whether they are academic or not. When it comes to making mistakes in a classroom, mathematics is typically the subject for these errors to happen. Math, at the younger grade level, usually requires students to find a right or wrong answer. For example, all addition, subtraction, multiplication, or division problems have right answer. What students do to get that answer is how mistakes occur.

Visual representations and manipulatives is the best way to get students to learn, especially at the elementary level. When a student physically sees something taken away or something added onto what is already there, they are more than like to be able to figure out the problem rather than reading a bunch of words and taking a guess.

With that being said, I have had the opportunity to teach a class full of students that are undergoing e-learning practices at the same time that I am taking this class. I go to class in the morning and then right to work afterwards, therefore I have been able to witness some of the techniques that we discuss in class. One of the most commonly found errors that I tend to disagree with is the fact that students are still working out of workbooks during this time. Although, the teacher is available to answer any questions, the mathematical experience for these children is completely different behind a screen. I find that my students are struggling to understand the information that they are being taught because the do not have the resources that they would in a given classroom setting. We are doing our best at trying to provide these resources for the students, however the learning process is different for everyone. Not two students learn the same, therefore the ways of mathematics that I was taught to love may not be the same ways that my students love or even know how to do. For example, my favorite way to learn multiplication was by using the lattice method, and that is not even a method that they teach in the classroom now a days.