Clinical Interview Part 2

During my clinical interview, I took two students from a 6th grade math class and asked them to answer four questions on a
worksheet as I asked them what their process and thinking was. Both students said math was their favorite subject and had general
positive feelings on math. They, however, had negative feelings towards the class and school. It seemed like they liked the subject but
learning was not enjoyable for them. During the interview, even though we were in the library, they were both distracted by each other
and by little things in their surroundings.
For the first problem, the student was given a basic word problem with subtraction. I drew a number line for them from 1 to 12
and asked them to show me their work. Student A correctly found the answer but hesitated to use a number line. She subtracted each
number at a time because she knew that the apples were being taken away from Sally each time. Student B also got the correct answer.
However, instead of subtracting each number he added 4, 2 and 1 and got 7 and then subtracted 7 from 10. This student did not know
how to use a number line properly. On the given number line, he carefully labeled “Sally” above 10, “teacher” above 4, “BFF” over 2
and “mom” over 1. He marked how many apples each person had instead of going down the number line like Student A did. Student B
also marked the question for key words.
Both students got that the answer was 0 right away for the second question. They took some time drawing the number line but
they correctly spaced it out evenly and labeled each number. They understood that because the teacher started with 32 crayons and lost
32 crayons, she now had no crayons because they were the same number. Question three was a challenge question where I wanted to
see their knowledge on time and change over time. Again, student A subtracted 2 from 10 and then 4 and student B subtracted 6 from
10 because 2+4 is 6. Both students got -4 because the submarine was going underwater, even though they were subtracting positive
integers.
I wanted to see if they had any knowledge on additive inverses through the last question. I gave them two problems and asked
if they were the same or not. Both had the same answer of “no” because they were subtracting one and adding the other. For Student
A, I then asked her if -9+5 and 9+5 were the same and she replied “yes”. Both students had little knowledge on negative numbers and
what they mean. They seemed to ignore the negative sign when solving these problems.
Overall, their responses were interesting to listen to because I felt like they were common misconceptions that most of the
students in that class had. While planning our lesson plan, we both felt like our lesson had to be more basic and try to break down each
step more than we thought we would have to. I also wanted to talk more about number lines and how to use them. Even though they
are not as commonly used in math when solving problems later on, I think that it is a helpful tool when learning negative numbers. It
also sets a stronger foundation for them when learning more advanced things such as inequalities. Both students loved math but they
struggled with a lot of foundational math skills. I felt like with more one on one discussions, these students would have a better
procedural and conceptual understanding of subtracting integers and using number lines.