Kelly Collova Dr.

Bulgar ELD 375 April 15, 2013 Field Report 3 A Mathematics Learning Profile of an Individual For this field report, I worked with a third grade student named David. He is an eight year old student of Mrs. Reil at Wicoff Elementary School and he is very strong in math. Mrs. Reil had me work with David because she thought he would be able to handle the problem. I had David solve the ice cream problem in the hallway outside Mrs. Reils classroom. I sat next to him in the hallway on the floor. I had him read the problem to himself and I gave him notebook paper to write down his solutions on. I avoided interjecting him while he was working on the problem as much as possible because I wanted to see where his thinking led him first. I only helped David when he asked me a question about the problem or when I saw that he was getting confused with the combinations. After David read the problem to himself, he looked sort of confused so I explained what the question was asking more clearly to him. David then understood what the question was asking and he started to work on the problem. He abbreviated chocolate ice cream as C, strawberry ice cream as S, hot fudge as H, whipped cream as W, and cherry as Ch. The abbreviations he used indicated to me that he immediately knew he would be writing a long list and that he did not want to write out the full word for each ingredient. As David began to come up with the different combinations of ice cream sundaes he asked me if the order that he listed each ingredient for the combinations in mattered. I informed him that it does not matter which order he writes the ingredients in, but that he just cannot repeat a combination that has the exact

same ingredients. David thinking about the order showed me that he was thinking about how he was going to organize the combinations on paper. The first six combinations that David listed were the combination that involved all of the five ingredients and the five combinations that involved only four ingredients. After listing these six combinations, David got stuck and stated that he was getting very confused. I asked him a few questions to guide him to start thinking of other combinations and then he began to realize that combinations could be made up that consisted of only one kind of ice cream with toppings. Once he wrote down the rest of the combinations, his thinking showed me that he understood the pattern of the problem. He also explained to me that he realized how just the toppings did not count as a combination because an ice cream sundae has to have at least one kind of ice cream in it. Although David is one of the two high level math students in Mrs. Reils class, he only correctly listed twenty five combinations out of the twenty six correct ice cream sundae combinations. Mrs. Reil and I were very surprised that he did not come up with all the possible combinations. David left out the chocolate, hot fudge, cherry combination. He wrote down the chocolate-strawberry ice cream combination twice but reversed the order. I think David missed the chocolate, hot fudge, cherry combination because he was too worried about how to organize all of the ice cream sundae combinations on paper. While he was working on the problem he mentioned to me a few times that he was getting confused because he did not want to repeat a combination. He also mentioned this to me when I asked him a few questions after he was done working on the problem. The ice cream problem showed me that David does not do well with inquiry-based tasks. I looked through Davids math work in his math notebook throughout the course of the school

year. His work indicates to me that he has a very high understanding for basic mathematical concepts and that he understands the meanings of mathematical vocabulary words, but does not fully grasp problems that have multiple answers.