Jordan Earley

Student Interview Assignment

Memo #1: Student A: 10 years old, 5th grade

After interviewing Student A, I learned that Student A does have the foundational support

of number sense, but Student A doesn’t always apply the efficiently number sense concepts to

every problem. For example, Student A when asked to explain how many items each person

would get if all 24 items were to be split among 6 people, Student A automatically said 4 items. I

asked Student A to explain their thinking and they said, “I just know 6x4 equals 24”. I asked

Student A to represent that using the 24 items in front of them. Student A made 4 groups of 6 but

when asked where the 4 in 6x4 is represented in their representation, Student A took 4 items

from one of the rows of 6 and said that is where you get 4 from 6x4=24. This was surprising to

me because Student A had a lot of foundational number sense leading up to this moment, which

then made me question if my question to them was confusing or set them up for confusion. It

was also surprising because the student set up the items to represent 4 groups of 6 instead of 6

groups of 4. When I asked Student A to show me their thinking either using the manipulatives or

by drawing, they would become confused or would place the items into groups differently then

what they first explained. Another instance where I learned more about the student and their

thought process was when I asked Student A about if we were to split the items in half, how

many items would I get and how many items would they get. Student A’s response was

interesting because their response was “you would get 14”. My first observation is that they tried

to apply quick knowledge to the problem but was just mistaken by their mental math. When

asked to show me, they were getting very lost with the items because they were sure in their head

that I would receive 14 of the items.

Questions that I asked this student included:

1. How many items do you think there are?

- How do you know it is 24 items?

2. How many items do you have? Can you write the number?

3. How many would you have if I gave you one more? Two more? Three more? Ten more?

Twenty more? 100 more?

4. How many would you have if I took one away? Two away? Three away? Ten away?

Twenty away?

5. Do you think you have enough to make any groups of ten? 

6. How many groups of ten do you think you’ll have? Would you have any leftovers? How

many?

- Can you show me your thinking? Either by drawing or using the items?

7. How many more items would you need to get to 30? 40? 50? 100? 1000?

8. How many items would you have if I doubled the ones you have already?

9. If I had 3 times as many items as you, how many would I have?

10. If you gave me half of your items, how many would you have left?

- What would giving me half look like? Can you show me your thinking?

11. How many items would each person get if they were shared with 6 people?

- Using the items, what would this look like?

- I hear you say, “each person would get 6 because you know 6x4 equals 24”. Can

you show me this using the items?

12. How many people could you share with if you gave each person 3 items?

13. How many different ways could you share them equally?
14. How many more items would you need to share them evenly with 5 people?

I would describe my ability to elicit student thinking as supportive but also developing.

This was my first experience interviewing a student where teaching wasn’t the main goal,

and it was difficult for me to ask basic yet probing questions without leading the student any

sort of way towards a correct answer. Thus, I feel that I was able to elicit student thinking

through asking the student to show me their thinking visually, but I do feel that I could’ve

done things differently or asked better questions. Some changes I would make would be to be

more prepared with a variety of questions depending on the situation and student response. I

wasn’t prepared for how much mental work this student was doing within their head, and I

feel that I lacked in my ability to get the student to verbally explain their thinking. For the

next interview, I will want to stress more opportunities for the student to show their thinking

visually, and to stimulate that opportunity by asking questions based on visualization. Such

as, asking the student to show me how many items each person would get.

Memo #2: Student B: 10 years old, 5th grade

During the second interview I learned that Student B has good foundational knowledge

of place value, counting, mathematical operations, and number sense. This student took time

to think each problem out and when mental math was hard to do for this student, they then

went to drawing pictures, using the items, and used written operations to solve. For example,

when I asked the student how many items there would be if there were three times as many

items, this student did some thinking out loud saying “well I know that 24 + 24 equals 48

because 4+4=8 and 2+2=4, making it 48. That would mean that we would add another 24 to

48 to get three times as many”. This student then tried relying on mental math in her head,
 but I believe since 8+4 equals a number larger than 10, thus needing to bring up the 1, this

student needed to write down her thinking to keep track. I did allow this student to write

down their work because this student was very vocal about the thinking going on in their

head before using algorithms. What I found the most interesting was when this student

automatically knew an answer because they relied on using numbers, they were familiar

with. For example, when I asked the student how many more items would be needed to share

the items evenly with 5 people, this student was quick to say you need 1 more. I then asked

this student to explain how they got to that answer and they said “well I know 5x5 equals 25.

25 is only one away from 24, therefore they would need one more item to share evenly”. This

was interesting to me because this demonstrates the student’s knowledge of working with

easier numbers to solve a problem.

Questions I asked:

15. How many items do you think there are?

- How do you know it is 24 items?

- I noticed you grouped the numbers, can you explain to me how you grouped them

and why?

16. Can you write the number?

17. How many would you have if I gave you one more? Two more? Three more? Ten more?

Twenty more? 100 more?

- Can you write those numbers down?

18. How many would you have if I took one away? Two away? Three away? Ten away?

Twenty away?
19. How many groups of ten do you think you’ll have? Would you have any leftovers? How

many?

- How do you know there will be 2 groups of ten and 4 left over? Can you show me

your thinking using the items?

- How many more would we need to make it 3 groups of 10?

20. How many more items would you need to get to 30? 40? 50? 100? 1000?

21. How many items would you have if I doubled the ones you have already?

22. If I had 3 times as many items as you, how many would I have?

- How do you know this? Can you explain to me your thinking using a picture?

23. If you gave me half of your items, how many would you have left?

- What would giving me half look like? Can you show me your thinking?

24. How many items would each person get if they were shared with 6 people?

- How would you show me this using the items? How would you share these items

with 6 people?

25. How many people could you share with if you gave each person 3 items?

26. How many more items would you need to share them evenly with 5 people?

- Why did you use your knowledge of the number 25 to help you solve the

problem?

I believe that this time around for the second interview, my ability to ask better questions

and elicit deeper student thinking was more present than during the first interview. For example,

right away when I asked Student B how many items were placed in front of them, they began

counting and I could see them getting lost in the counting and knowing which ones they have

already counted. I then asked the student about a way that might be easier to count all the items
and they said “oh, well I can count by twos”. Right away I was eliciting student thinking without

giving this student the thoughts or way that I think would be easier. This student was able to use

my prompting to revise their thought process. I feel that the changes I made, especially by

emphasizing visual representation of their thought process was what made the interview

stronger.

Final Reflection

After completing both interviews, I have learned more about both student’s

understanding of counting, place, mathematical operations, and number sense. One of the biggest

concerns in my placement right now is student’s foundational knowledge using number sense,

and this interview assignment has given both me and my Cooperating Teacher tools for

understanding each student individually. Number sense refers to the good intuition based on

numbers and their relationships (Van De Walle, pg. 136). For example, Student B used numbers

that they could easily work with when asked about how many more items would be needed for

the items to be shared evenly among 5 people. Student B recognizes 5 as an easier number to

work with and applied 5x5 to their solution. This is using number sense because this student was

able to use easier numbers to work with and apply the knowledge that the product of 5x5 is only

one away from 24. Both students had foundations of good number sense, such as when they

explored the problems visually rather than just relying on the standard algorithms. They both did

push towards just writing down the standard algorithms for solving, thus I had to redirect them to

solving using other strategies. I wanted the students to lean on what they know about the

mathematical operations before leaning on the algorithms that can become confusing or lead to

error in computation.
 Eliciting student thinking was the most difficult parts of this experience in interviewing

students. What I learned from the process is that every student will have different tools and

thought processes when solving a problem. For example, what I found really interesting when it

comes to student thinking is that when I asked how many items there would be if I gave one

more, two more, ten more, and so on, Student A instead of just adding to the original 24 each

time would add on to each answer. In my head I was thinking the student would reset back to the

original 24 each time a new amount would be added, but Student A didn’t. Student B would only

add each one to 24, which shows that students will think of the problem differently. Overall, I

learned that students can lead themselves in using strategies that work for them and that as

teachers we should be letting them instead of just teaching a one way of solving. This has been a

common theme that I have been learning while in class and hearing our class discussions. This

interview and seeing how students revise on their own with a little prompting and use different

avenues for solving when hitting a roadblock was helping me in making connections to what we

have been discussing in our class about how math should be student centered.