Applying Newmans Error Analysis

NAPLAN Year 7 (Non-calculator)

Question Syllabus code Correct Answer

1 MA4-4NA D
2 MA4-4NA D
3 MA4-5NA B
4 MA4-9NA B
5 MA4-18MG C
6 MA3-8NA D
7 MA4-17MG E
8 MA4-12MG 10
9 MA4-8NA 2 or-2
10 MA4-7NA B
11 MA4-4NA C
12 MA3-8NA B
13 MA4-15MG C
14 MA4-5NA C
15 MA3-16MG 128
16 MA3-7NA B
17 MA3-18SP 40
18 MA4-17MG 30
19 MA4-4NA 402 x 5
20 MA3-7NA D
21 MA3-15MG D
22 MA3-17MG A
23 MA4-14MG 1250
24 MA3-14MG A
25 MA4-5NA C
26 MA4-7NA 150
27 MA3-16MG 150
28 MA4-5NA D
29 MA3-7NA A
30 MA3-12MG 256
31 MA4-14MG C
32 MA3-12MG 300
Tests and Interviews
For this assessment I had I had one male student from year 9 and one male and one female
from year 7 each complete the NAPLAN Mathematics non-calculator assessment related to
their corresponding year.
Person A Year 9
The first person I tested is someone I know quite well, but was caught unaware as he had no
idea what he was going to be doing. Despite this, he was quite willing to sit the test and was
expecting to receive a quite average score. He sped through the first half of the test in under
10 minutes getting only 2 questions wrong. I later discovered these were both careless
errors on his part as he saw his mistake immediately and corrected himself when I asked
him to read the question back to me.
He continued to fly through the test until question 24. He began to struggle from this point
taking time on each before either answering or skipping and returning to them once he
reached the end. Once he felt like he was finished I mentioned he had plenty on time left,
which he used to quickly go over questions he was unsure about. He handed the completed
test back to me after only 26 minutes with no interest to go the whole 40 minutes.
His final score was 20/32, however I dont feel this was an accurate representation of his
skill level. As mentioned before he had a couple careless errors that he was easily able to
answer with good understanding, and these werent the only two examples. After removing
all his careless errors, I found that there were only 7 questions he truly didnt understand. I
feel as though he may not have taken it so seriously, as it was not in a school setting and
was being conducted by someone he knew. It was for this reason I did not think he was the
best candidate to do a Newmans Error Analysis on.
Person B Year 7
The second person was a student Id never met before and he was not excited to participate
at all. When I asked him if he liked maths and if he was good at it, he was very pessimistic
and said he wasnt good at anything. I did my best to get him out of that mindset and then
began the test. Just like the year 9 student, he breezed through the first half of the test in
just under 10 minutes getting every single question right. He did, however, correct himself
on several occasions, changing his answer immediately after writing the wrong one.
I noted, while he was going through the test, how quickly and accurately he answered any
question involving, fractions, decimals, and percentages. There was only one question on
fractions, towards the end, that he got wrong. I noted it was the only one he seemed to
struggle on so I asked him about it and found he had understood it completely, he just made
errors in the working out. I believe he has a good grasp on the concepts, but just needs
more practice with the calculations.
He continued speeding through the test, and bar one careless error, getting nothing wrong
until question 23. From this point onwards, he started to spend a lot more time on each
question. Once finished, he went back through the entire paper, thoroughly checking each
answer and completed the test after 32 minutes with a total score of 26/32. He did make 1
careless error, meaning there were 5 he truly got wrong doing better that the year 9
student.
Person C Year 7
The second person was a student who I have met a couple times and she was told in
advance what I would be doing. She is not a fan of maths, but seemed happy to do the test.
Just like the first 2 she also went through the first half of the test quite quickly. In 10
minutes she had reached the halfway mark with only 2 errors, both of which were just
careless errors. She kept going fine until question 20 when she started to struggle and
getting several wrong answers.
Just like both other students when she started struggling she would skip them and continue
till the end where she would come back to them. There were several she came back to and
answered immediately. This gave me the impression that she knew what she was doing, but
may have been overthinking it due to the pressure of being timed.
She completed the test in 30 minutes with a final score of 20/32. She may have had 3
careless errors, but she struggled a lot with the final 10 questions and there were 9 question
she truly answered wrong. All 3 students were able to read their questions perfectly and
they were all able to comprehend what each was asking them to do, however this 3 rd
student was the only one to have all the final three errors in her responses. It was for this
reason Ive chosen to talk about my Newmans Error Analysis on her.

Newmans Error Analysis (Clements & Ellerton, 2008)

Her first incorrect answer was in question 9, so I began by politely asking her to read the
question to me, to which she did without error. Then I continued, Okay, so could you
explain to me what the question is asking you to do? Only a few words into her explanation
she realised she hadnt multiplied the number by itself and instead had simply subtracted 9
from 13, giving her initial answer of 4. She quickly explained that she would then have to
find the square root of that since the original number had been multiplied by itself. While
she knew how to read it right, she may not have been paying attention to what it was saying
during the test. Therefore, I classed this as a careless error.
Person Cs (C for short) first real error cam at question 20.
Ben: Could you please read question 20 to me?
C: 37 point 9 times 10.
Ben: So what is the question asking you to do?
C: To times 37.9 by 10.
Ben: And which method do you use to get your answer?
C: Well, I just add 0 to the end.
Obviously, this was the end of the analysis for this question. This is a transformation error.
Its easy to see she has simply been told a rule about multiplying by 10 and is just applying
that rule to a place where it no longer works. In the syllabus (MA3-7NA) it explains that a
student should recognise that a zero at the end of a decimal has the same value as the same
number without the final zero. Had she known this, she would have realized 37.90 would be
the same as 37.9. She has, what Skemp referred to as, instrumental understanding of this
question (as cited in Beswick, 2005). This form of understanding is not very adaptable to
different situations, which is why she answered this question incorrect. Her teacher will
need to build her conceptual understanding of multiplying with decimals, which could be
done by forming patterns including both whole numbers and decimals.
She also answered question 22 incorrectly.
Ben: Could you please read question 22 for me?
C: Jill lives in a street that runs directly north-south. Her house is north of the park and
west of the school. What street does Jill live in?
Ben: Okay, could you tell me what the question is asking you to do?
C: Its asking me to find what street Jill lives in.
Ben: Okay, so which method do you use to get your answer?
C: I would follow the directions.
Ben: Okay so can you explain to me how you worked that out?
C: Well I would go north of the park, which is up here, and go west of the school, which
is here. So, she lives in Main street.
This is where her error is made. She understands the question just fine, and she know what
to do, however, she doesnt know the difference between east and west (MA3-17MG). This
is coded as a process skills error. I wanted to see if I could help her get to the correct
answer. I tried to explain it to her by relating it to something she knew. I asked her if she
could picture a map of Australia. Once she said she could I asked her where Western
Australia was. Just as I finished asking the question her face lit up and she immediately knew
what I was getting at. Once she realised which way was which, she looked back at the
question and pointed out the correct answer quite quickly.
She also got the very next question wrong.
Ben: Could you read question 23 for me, please?
C: This jug has some milk in it. If Eve adds an extra 500 millilitres of milk to the jug, how
many millilitres of milk will then be in the jug?
Ben: Can you tell me which method you use to get your answer?
C: Find out how much is in the jug first, then add 500 millilitres to that.
Ben: Okay, can you please explain how you get your answer?
C: Well, the litre is divided into 4 sections, so each section is 250 millilitres. That means
there is 750 millilitres in the jug to start with. When you add 500 millilitres you get
1.25 litres.
Here we can see she has a good understanding of what needs to get done and the method
used to get to the correct answer. However, she didnt read the answer space carefully
enough and gave the correct answer in the wrong units (MA3-11MG). This is coded as an
encoding error. An effective way to reinforce the use of correct units could be by putting a
few questions on it in a Five Question Starter over the course of a few lessons. Another
good idea would be to incorporate several different units into a Square Saw to have the
students work out.
She had another couple careless errors, but the rest of her errors were all transformation.
One more example of this would be the final question on the test.
Ben: Can you read this question to me, please?
C: This is the label from a can of soup. What is the mass of one serve of this soup?
Ben: Okay, so what is the question asking you to do?
C: To find out what the mass of one serve of the soup is.
Ben: And what method would you use to find the answer?
C: UmIm not sure, so I just added everything from this column.
I chose to finish with this one as Person B had the exact same problem with it. Both could
read and comprehend what it was asking, yet neither were able to come up with the correct
method. They both, however, came up with the same incorrect method. They both knew it
was wrong, but tried anyway. This is coded as a transformation error. The syllabus states in
Mass (MA3-12mg) students should be able to distinguish between the gross mass and the
net mass of containers holding substances, eg cans of soup.
When it comes to teaching this kind of activity it could help by forming the class into groups
as Yackel, Cobb, Wood, Wheatley, and Merkel (1990) said, it can provide important social
interaction where they can explain their thinking out loud and understand reasoning from
other perspectives (as cited in Roche and Clarke, 2015). It could also help to provide minor
hints, steering them away from wrong answers, rather than towards correct ones.
Over all 3 of the tests the majority of errors were transformation errors. This could be due
to the difficulties of transitioning into secondary school. In her book, Goos talks about the
difficulties of this transition and suggests using teaching strategies involve the regular and
systematic use of open-ended questions, mathematical games, authentic problems, and
extended investigation to enhance students mathematics learning and capacity to apply
what they know. I believe all these things can have an enormous impact. Bothe the year 7
students I interviewed lacked confidence, but once they realised they could answer
questions they didnt think they could, along with a bit of praise from me, they were excited
to talk to their parents about it. By boosting their confidence in themselves Im hoping they
try a little harder, knowing they are smarter than they think. I think this is another great
strategy in improving mathematics education.

References
Beswick, K. (2005). Preservice Teachers' Understandings of Relational and Instrumental
Understanding. International Group for the Psychology of Mathematics Education, 2, 161-
168.
Board of Studies NSW. (2012). Mathematics K-10 syllabus. Retrieved from
http://syllabus.nesa.nsw.edu.au/assets/mathematicsk10/downloads/mathematicsk10_full.
pdf
Clements, M. A., & Ellerton, N. (2008). The Newman Procedure for Analysing Errors on
Written Mathematical Tasks. Retrieved August 17th.
Goos, M., Vale, C., & Stillman, G. (2017). Teaching secondary school mathematics: Research
and practice for the 21st century. Allen & Unwin.
Roche, A., & Clarke, D. (2015). Describing the Nature and Effect of Teacher Interactions with
Students during Seat Work on Challenging Tasks. Mathematics Education Research Group of
Australasia.