Challenge 4

A few weeks after the teaching of the unit, the first graders were interviewed again about their understandings of number concepts and of addition and subtraction involving sums less than 20. What shifts or changes do you see in the students’ thinking from the initial interviews?

Derek: After a few weeks of instruction on addition and subtraction, you can definitely see a change in Derek's attitude towards the subject. He keeps saying to the teacher stuff like, "that's too easy" and talking very confident-like. His ability to solve the higher number concepts has definitely gotten a lot better, because without the instruction before, he was not able to do that.

Elizabeth: Elizabeth definitely learned and grew so much after her time of instruction with addition and subtraction. She was adding and subtracting bigger numbers in her head and a little bit on her fingers as well. Before, she could only add and subtract very small numbers and now she can add/subtract much bigger numbers and you can definitely tell that her understanding of the number concepts has definitely grown.

Jim: Jim also got a lot better at adding and subtracting after a few weeks of instruction on the unit. Before, he would add/subtract numbers and give an answer that sometimes would be right and sometimes would be wrong and sometimes he could explain how he came up with his answers and sometimes he couldn't explain it at all and it or it wouldn't make any sense at all. I definitely saw that Jim is starting to understand the number concepts a lot better now. He was just a little bit of a slower learner than maybe some of the others.

Lauren: Lauren was very good at adding/subtracting before the instruction unit on it. However, she did learn a new technique to use and did memorize her doubles well. She was able to explain how she got her answers really well using the new technique she learned. She seems to have gained a little bit better understanding of the larger number concepts.

All of the students, during the instructional unit, seemed to have been taught their doubles in addition/subtraction. They knew them very well. They also knew how to add/subtract by multiples of 5 and 10 really well and whenever they got into the larger number concepts, that is what pretty much all four of them would do. They would round to the closest multiple of either 5 or 10 and then go from there how they knew best. It was interesting to see and a really neat way to watch how they had gone from their own individual strategies before the instructional unit to the new technique they had learned afterwards.