Pilot Interview

As a teacher, it will be helpful to know what information a student may take from a given lesson, and to understand why they learn what they learn. To prepare myself to conduct pilot interviews with two 8th grade students in order to try to learn what information the students "took" from back-to-back lessons of pre-algebra, I began with closely observing those two lessons as they were presented to the class. I followed this activity up by discussing the lesson plans with the teacher who presented them. According to the teacher, both lessons, which focused on identifying patterns within a string of numbers, and the order of operation for solving problems with multiple operations, were meant to be review for the students.

On the first day of my observations, the teacher reviewed with her class two strategies for problem solving. The first strategy was, when looking for patterns in a string of numbers, to break the string of numbers down, look at each pair of consecutive numbers, determine what could be done to the first number mathematically to get to the second number, and identify a pattern being done. The teacher and students together worked through a few examples, including examples which offered more than one way to get to the next number in the string to remind students that the first thing they try may not always result in a pattern. The second problem-solving strategy the teacher reviewed was, when solving a math problem with multiple operations, to recall and solve the problem with the correct order of operations. The teacher then offered one method for her students to remember the correct order; to use an anagram