Solving for Why

George Harrison

Clinical Interview
Charlie
November 2013

Background

Charlie is an 8th grade at Countryside Middle School. She has been evaluated every 3
years since Kindergarten, for a language based learning disability. She has an
average IQ of 91. She performs in the low average range. Her areas of identified
weakness, as determined through a battery of Special Education tests are: on her
Verbal Comprehension score in the 27 percentile, Concept Formation in the
percentile, Decoding Composite in the percentile and Reading Composite in the 16
percentile. The same battery of tests also show her short term and working
memory to be in the 2nd percentile, Shes on a 504 with memory scores that low?
though this is not strongly addressed in her current 504 plan. Accommodations in
her current plan call for: scribing on both assessments and homework, problems
and instructions should be read aloud, extended time for written work, use of
graphic organizers, small group testing.

Charlies NECAP scores have declined since starting middle school. In the
elementary grades she had Title 1 Math and ELA support as well as
Speech/Language support. In middle school she has received Title 1 Reading and
Wilson through the Special Education teacher on her instructional team.

Charlie has also been going through an emotional time during her middle school
years. As a 7th grader her father spent several months hospitalized barely surviving
multiple intestinal surgeries. Her 8th grade year started with her parents separating
and getting a divorce. She is deeply affected and presents as mildly depressed. She
is receiving low level counseling supports.

I was interested in interviewing Charlie due to the fact that I had had Charlie as a
student in the 6th grade. 6th grade was for her, a break-through year, developing a
sense of confidence around mathematics and even starting to sometimes enjoy
math class. Her NECAP results the spring of 7th grade showed a decline from
Proficient to Partially Proficient. I had been fairly surprised by these results, as they
seemed contradictory to the thinking and work she had been producing the year
before.

Her current 8th grade teacher came to me this year and explained that his class was
really struggling with solving algebraic equations. So this is the mathematical focus?
When we used a CRA Charlie presented as being in the middle group, able to solve
the abstract equations with the symbolic method, but unable to use Algebra tiles to
model or solve an equation. For example, she modeled 3x with three 1 tiles and
one X tile, rather then three X tiles.

Theories:

1) I was curious to further discover how much her language issues around
decoding affected her ability to translate and solve equations.
2) I was curious to discover if she had a sense of equality when trying to solve
various equations.
3) Her teacher suggested that her (and the classs) lack of understanding of
rational numbers was a roadblock to her successfully solving equations
These are interesting theories. I like that you have spread them out among several
different categories.

Interview

At the beginning of the interview we talked about how her school year was going in
general. She quickly focused just on math class. She indicated that she thought that
this years math class is easy because she was just doing the same thing over and
over.
Like equations, we are just doing equations again and again, over and over again.

She was slightly agitated that she had taken a pre-test out of the 7th grade book on
rational numbers just before the interview. She described them as distance from
Zero. , Like -6 is 6 away from zero.

I asked her what kind of math she was the most confident with. She responded
equations, finding X or the variable. I asked her the process she thought about
when she was solving equations

Charlie: Make X alone. Then, yeah Columns. Then re-writing

Nate: What do you mean by columns?

C: First it is the X then you bring down the other numbers. Leave X alone. Then you
deal with the numbers. Then you solve for X.

N Are some equations harder then others?

C: Yes, the ones with harder fractions

I asked what those were, and she responded by ones that didnt have common
denominators.

I was a little surprised that her first instinct wasnt to say, here let me show you, but
to try to verbally walk me through her thought process.
She then attempted the first problem:

Your profit for mowing lawns this week is $24. You are paid $8 per hour and you paid
$40 for a gas for the lawn mower. How many hours did you work this week?

First she asked me to read it to her. Then, she started trying to figure it out in her
head. When asked what she was thinking she asked me What is profit? I asked,
what do you think it means? She said, you find out how much money you earned
and then subtract how much you paid for gas.

She wrote (vertically):

8 x 24 = 192 40 = $152

I then asked her what the question was asking for, she said hours. She then said, oh
then I would divide by 24, oh wait, I am confusing myself, that doesnt make any
sense.

She then said, Oh wait, you would have to know how many hours they worked to
figure it out. She then said that she couldnt solve this one. Came so close and then
backed out.

At this point, I was thinking that the first problem had too many elements for her to
sort out and keep in her head. It was also clear she did not really realize that it was
looking for hours until I had her tell me what the problem was asking for.

I then asked her to solve a series of equations including single and multi-step with
rational numbers including her hard fractions. She solved these fairly quickly,
though she used a calculator for some of the more complex division with decimals.
When solving one problem with a fraction coefficient she inverted and multiplied to
clear her fraction. She solved these fairly automatically; her only pauses were to
recall multiplication facts.

She showed strong understanding of procedure and mathematical properties.

What did she show you that led you to this conclusion?

We then went back to word problems so I could explore how her language issues
affected her ability to find the math within the problem.

Your basketball team wins a game by 13 points. The opposing team scores 72 points.
Explain how to find your teams score.

She quickly wrote 72 + 13. Verbally she explained her thinking. I then asked her to
write this situation as an equation.
She wrote:
13p 72p

Then she became really confused and said this wont work because this would say
that your team lost points. It wouldnt work because they both have p, so the
variable couldnt be alone, so then it is no solution. I asked why she used p, she
said because it represents p. Why p? Because the problem is dealing with points.
The variable is the main point of the problem.

When I asked why it was more difficult to write an equation then to just figure it out,
she said, because you have to figure out what goes on the other side of the equal
sign.

We then looked at each line and she explained to me what words or phrases she
used to understand the problem. We walked through the problem one line at a time.
She identified all the appropriate words and associated them with the correct
operations. She translated it, just as she had her first reaction. This seems to
indicate that on this basic level, her reading and decoding is not having an impact on
her ability to solve the problem. Thats an interesting conclusions maybe warranted.
She does seem to have trouble, however, when it comes to putting ideas together.

We tried another word problem, using rates. She again took the unit and used it as
the variable. She defined the variable as M = miles, though the unknown was time.
She started to write her equation down but then became really flustered saying she
couldnt do this one, because she was getting a negative number and she couldnt
have a negative distance. We then went line by line, and she identified key terms or
phrases and what they told her to do with the problem. She had them correct.
When she tried to solve the problem or write an equation, she got flustered. This
points towards a lack of strategy to accommodate her working memory deficit. OK.
How might you deal with this?

My final request for her was to try to generate a word problem that could be solved
or written as an equation. She seemed complete at a loss, saying, no, I dont know
how. When asked why, she said, I cant because I dont know what would be the
main point of it. She eventually wrote 3x + 7 = 12. She explained that she couldnt
come up with a word problem for it because she didnt know what to do with the 3x.

I then asked her to write an equation that didnt have a variable. She wrote a basic
addition problem 12 + 5 = 17. Then I asked her to try to write a problem that the
equation could represent. She wrote, Joe had 12 cars and his friend had 17 cars.
How many cars did his friend have? This response is consistent with her earlier
responses. It points towards her trouble with connecting abstract equations in
symbolic form with real or word problems.
I believe that both her working memory, trying to keep all the pieces in play, and her
lack of understanding of a variable as an unknown create an obstacle to her ability
to create or write equations to represent problems presented in word form.

Conclusions
Initial Theories Revisited:

1) I was curious to further discover how much her language issues around
decoding affected her ability to translate and solve equations.

After the interview, I do not think that there is evidence to support this theory. On
the single step word problems she was easily able to solve the problems. I think the
working memory was her stumbling block on the multi-step word problems. She
was able to translate the word problem when she went line by line, picking out the
key words and phrases. She was unable to synthesis all the pieces into any form of
coherence. I think this points more to working memory.

2) I was curious to discover if she had a sense of equality when trying to solve
various equations.
Evidence pointed to Yes, in the abstract, (she is able to algorithmically calculate
maintaining equality) but I could not get a sense of this with any written form of a
problem. I suspect, though I do not have any evidence, that if I was to do a follow-up
interview, using more simple word problems in a progression to more complex
problems, that I would see more issues around equality.

3) Her teacher suggested that her (and the classs) grasp on rational numbers
was a roadblock to her successfully solving equations.

I found no evidence that this was the case for her, though I did not delve to
deeply.

New Theories

1) I believe that her short term/ working memory, with out the instinct or
perhaps ability to draw or create models limits her ability to tackle complex
problems. The following snippet from the interview makes me particularly
worried, as my solution would be to use modeling as an intervention.

a. At one point while I was stalling, to come up with a different

type of problem, I asked her if she was reading for fun yet. She
looked at me aghast and said NO! reading is not fun. I asked
her if she ever daydreamed about the books she read. She said,
you mean picture them in my head? I said sure. She replied,
I understand what is going on but I cant picture things in my
head.
 2) I believe that she has some fundamental misconceptions around variables.
This is of critical importance as she is rapidly approaching the transition
from a variable as an unknown to a variable as something that varies
(functions).

Clinical Interview Rubrics

Content
1 2 3 4
There is a Some of the Has a Background section that tells something about why The personal theory is
fundamental items for the student was chosen and what the specific focus of the elaborated with
misunderstanding. meeting the interview will be. connections to math
The piece needs standard are Has an Interview section that reports salient information learning research and
to be rethought present from the interview. methods for testing the
and redone. - Could include quotes, anecdotes, description of theory
the childs process or answers
Has a Conclusion section that gives personal theories about OR
the childs thinking that are supported by evidence from the
interview. Multiple theories are
given with evidence to
support them

Writing
1 2 3 4
There is a There are The writing reflects common usage and grammar, is The paper is
fundamental some issues reasonably organized so that one is able to follow the publication ready. It
misunderstanding. with argument, and has no major problems. might not have the
The piece needs continuity, right format, but that
to be rethought organization, the narrative is so
and redone. grammar, or compelling and well
usage. written that we could
imagine others
wanting to read it.

George,

There is some very good thinking here. Im particularly impressed by your ability to
consider a wide variety of issues that may be at the root of Charlies issues. I dont
think you can entirely rule out the language issue (though I agree, memory is more
compelling at this point). She does demonstrate some difficulty putting pieces together.
This is most likely working memory but it may also lie in her ability to make sense of
the language as she is reading it.