Jonathan

Anna Kingsbury

Sibley Elementary

March 19, 2015

Ms. Wisneiski
Summary of the Math Interview
1. Introduction
The student that I am meeting with is named Johnathan. He told me that
while he is not at school, he enjoys playing his Xbox and breakdancing! He
said that his favorite subject in school is math and that he really likes
multiplication. Jonathan seemed to enjoy playing math games the most
especially ones that were like a card game.
2. Conceptual Understanding of Four Mathematical Operations
Addition Jonathan knew nearly all of the addition problems very quickly, and
usually told me that he had those facts memorized especially if these
numbers were under 10. In one example, I asked him If you have a bunch of
balloons, and there are 7 red ones and 3 blue ones, how many balloons are in
your bunch? Jonathan very quickly responded that there would be 10, as he
knew that 7 + 3 = 10, and also that 10 7 = 3. He also had memorized
problems such as 7 + 7 = 14, 10 + 6 = 16, and 6 + 7 = 13, and did these
problems without issue.
Subtraction Jonathan seemed to have a firm grasp around the concept of
subtraction, though sometimes when he answered a question I believe he
simply miscounted in his head. For example, when I asked him 12 3, he
immediately stated that the answer was 8, and he knew that because he just
counted backwards from 12. This tells me that Jonathan understands exactly
how subtracting works, but perhaps mistakenly counted backwards from 12
in his head, ending up with 8 instead of 9 as the answer. Also, when I asked
him the question If I have 18 pencils and you have 9, how many more
pencils do I have than you?, Jonathan used the unifix cubes to directly model
this situation and ultimately came up with the correct answer of 9 after
counting the cubes. I believe that here he may not have recognized that 18
9 = 9 is the same thing as 9 + 9 = 18 (which he knew).
Multiplication At the beginning of the interview, Jonathan had said that his
favorite part about math was multiplication, though when I asked him a
multiplication story he did addition right away instead. I asked If a classroom
has 3 fish tanks and each tank has 5 fish, how many fish are there? and he
responded with 8, so I wonder if he just did not recognized the problem for
what it was. This was the only multiplication question that I got to ask
Jonathan, so I am excited to present more in the future tutoring sessions and
see what he is capable of!
Division He did not seem as experienced with division as he was with the
other mathematical operations. When asked the division question, he used
the unifix cubes and went about solving it in a correct manner, but ended up
adding cubes and concluding and incorrect answer. For example I asked the

question There are 12 puppies and 4 dog beds. You need to put the puppies
on the beds with the same number of puppies on each bed. How many
puppies should go on each bed? Jonathan started out strong by counting out
12 unifix cubes and began to divide them up. However, he divided the 12
puppies up into two different groups instead of 4 and arrived at 6 as the
answer, so I reminded him that there were 4 dog beds for the puppies. He
responded by adding two more sets of 6 puppies to get a total of 24 puppies,
with 6 on each of the 4 beds. Im excited to work with Jonathan further on
multiplication first, and then to see if he can turn that around and use that
understanding to reveal the concepts behind division.
3. Basic Fact Knowledge and Strategies
As I briefly touched on above, Jonathan seemed to have various strategies
that he used when solving problems presented during the tutoring session.
When asked most of the addition facts, he told me he just had these
memorized and was able to quickly reply with the answer. We played a card
game in which I could see this was the case that was called Sums that make
10 in which you had to match a card that was laid down (number 1-9) with
another card in your own hand that, when put together, would add up to ten.
He seemed to enjoy this game very much and liked showing off how quickly
he knew which numbers would make a match and which would not.
Jonathan also used the strategy of counting on. When asked problems such
as 8 + 3, he said that mentally he went 89, 10, 11 to reach the correct
answer of 11. He also used the doubles +/- 1 strategy with problems like 6
+ 7, in which he told me that he knew 7 + 7 = 14, - 1 to get 13.
4. Place Value Knowledge
Jonathan was not too keen on the idea of counted forwards or backwards by
1s or 10s, but I think this was just because he didnt want to just sit there
and count. In later games that we played however, he showed that he had a
fairly firm grasp on the understanding of what happened when you added 10
to a number, and had no problem counting by 10s in the game called Race
to 100, which is played with base 10 blocks and dice. The idea is that you
roll the dice, and then take that amount of pieces from the base 10 blocks
using either the 10s sticks or just the 1s squares until you get to 100.
Jonathan knew that once he got 10 of the single 1s pieces that he could
trade it in for a 10s stick, and as we got further in the game I would ask him
to count how many we each had to see who was winning the race to 100. He
had no problem finding that he had 84 by counting 10, 20, 30, 40, 50, 60,
70, 80 81, 82, 83, 84! and even was able to count backwards from 100 to
84 when I asked him how many points he still needed. Jonathan also had no
problem switching counting by 10s and by 1s if I were to lay down different
amounts of unifix cubes in front of him, or even subtracting 10s or 1s at a
time as I took them away.
5. Operation on Multi-Digit Numbers
Paper & Pencil or Number Sense for Addition We didnt do much work with
paper and pencil, as Jonathan seemed to either prefer solving the problems
mentally, or counting them out with the unifix cubes. However, he did do a
few problems on pencil and paper, one being 12 + 4, and it seemed to me

that he tried too hard to follow the rules of addition and ended up with an
incorrect answer. To explain he started with the 1s place by adding the 2
and the 4 and getting a 6, which he wrote down. However, he then tried to
carry the one over to the 10s place when there was no 1 that needed to be
carried. He ended up with 26, and knew right away that this was an incorrect
answer, then demonstrated why by modeling with unifix cubes.
Paper & Pencil or Number Sense for Subtraction Jonathan didnt end up
doing any pencil and paper work for subtraction, but with the subtraction
problems that he did do he seemed more comfortable seeing them as
incomplete addition problems and working them from that direction.
6. Conclusion
Jonathan had a wonderful grasp on sums that would make 10, but not so
much on larger numbers that would add up to make 20. I believe that this
would be a good area to work on for our next meeting as he already has a
base knowledge and simply needs more practice. I think that another good
place to work on would be making sure that he understands the algorithm
type concepts behind pencil and paper addition and subtraction, which could
easily be incorporated into a lesson working with sums that make 20. I also
think it would be fun to work on directly modeling some multiplication facts,
as Jonathan said those were his favorite.