Researchable Question 1: How Do Students Reason When Adding and Multiplying Fractions?

By: Sheila Frederixon, Lexington Holloway, Ashli Hogan, Amanda Love, and Alexandria Sullens

When starting our research, our original question was, why do students struggle with the connection between whole numbers and the fractional representation? This goes along the lines of subtracting fractions from whole numbers, for example: 1-(24/79). Some of our group members had students struggling in units on probability where they would have 1 (a fraction). This was a problem for many students and spurred the thought of our original question. We later changed our question to be more specific to look at the reasoning students use in the process of addition and multiplication of fractions. We decided having a more specific question would be better in the analysis of our students data. We decided on the question of, How do students reason when adding and multiplying fractions? because we wanted to understand the students reasoning between different operations of fractions. We thought analyzing one operation would not be enough to see students reasoning and four operations would be too much for us to analyze. Therefore we decided on two operations of addition and multiplication. We chose to put the word, reason in our question because we wanted to know why the students are calculating the fractions the way they do. We also chose the word, how because we wanted to test the students to determine how they are solving these problems and then interview them to determine why they are doing so. This question is something many of us had been pondering the entire year. We were shocked when we began our internship at the issues our students had with fractions. All of us had varying experiences from our students couldnt represent whole numbers as a fraction to our students could not add fractions. We found our

students could do problems perfectly without fractions, but as soon as fractions were thrown into the mix our students have no idea what to do. They can go from being able to solve any algebraic equation to acting like they have never learned algebra before. This is a problem not only because it causes students to shut down in class, but fractions are everywhere. Students cannot just shut down in real life when they see fractions. In our research we found that, researchers believe that the biggest reasoning behind students difficulty with fractions is fractions do not form a normal part of a childs environment and the operations on them are abstractly defined (Sadi, A.). They also noted that this is the main reason behind students misconception with fractions and operations on fractions. It was also noted that students tend to deal with multiplying fractions easily because it appears natural to multiply straight across, by multiplying the numerators together and multiplying the denominators together (Sadi, A.). It was also noted that although the method of multiplying fractions appears natural, students still have difficulty conceptualizing what it means to multiply fractions. Researchers suggest that when students are asked to add fractions; they choose the easy way out and decide to add the numerators and add the denominators as they do when multiplying fractions. They note that because finding common denominators is difficult for many students, they will develop their own rule and simply add the numerators and add the denominators. They also point out that one of the reasons students decided to add fractions straight across by adding the numerator and adding the denominator is because, resistance to accept

fractions as numbers leads students to conceptualize fractions as two different whole numbers, a misconception that often results in computational bugs, such as (Charalambous, C.Y., & Pitta-Pantazi). It is also suggested that, Developing an understanding of the operator and the quotient subconstructs of fractions was also found to explain about half of the variation of students performance on the tasks associated with the multiplicative operations of fractions. (Charalambous, C.Y., & Pitta-Pantazi) Throughout our group we implemented the study across a variety of districts. We had two urban districts in our study, a suburban district, and a rural district. These schools were Cass Tech (urban district), Everett High School (urban district), Troy High School (suburban district), and Owosso Middle School and Owosso High School (rural district). This allowed us to see how setting affected the students ability to reason through fractions. Each of us gave the survey to a majority of our students. This meant we got data from a wide variety of age range and ability level. The students we surveyed were in 7th grade math, Algebra 1, Geometry, Algebra 2, Trigonometry, Senior Math, and Pre-Calculus. We collected data by first distributing an assessment to our students. This test assessed our students on their ability to solve fractions of varying types. We had adding fractions, adding mix numbers, adding a whole number and a fraction, multiplying fractions, multiplying mixed numbers, and multiplying a whole number and a fraction. After we distributed the assessments to the students, we looked through their results and selected students to interview based on their responses. We looked for a variety of kids to question about their thinking. The students ranged

from a perfect score to not being able to complete any of the problems correctly. After the interviews, we chose to focus more of our attention on adding and multiplying fractions of the form a/b. We analyzed all the different results we got and coded the data for the four problems from the original assessment of that form. After analyzing the results we found from the different grades and school districts, we made some tables and graphs of the results (see appendix). From this, we can make a few conclusions from the data. We found that more students at each school knew how to add fractions correctly rather than incorrectly. Everett High School has the most students struggling with adding fractions, whereas Troy High School has the least amount. We also noticed that in Owosso from middle school to high school our data shows that students are improving on their fraction skills because more students answered the adding questions correctly in the high school than in the middle school. In Owosso there were some different results we found between the middle school and high school students. The middle school students added the numerator and multiplied the denominator, or vice versa, and none of the high school students did this. But the high school students cross multiplied and none of the middle school students did this. The number one misconception of adding fractions between all districts seemed to be that you add the numerators and the denominators. The next common problem we noticed was that students knew the correct method, but they made some kind of calculation error during the process. When it comes to multiplication we also found some interesting results. Again we noticed that more students answered the questions correctly rather than

incorrectly in all districts with the exception of Everett High School, where the same number of students that answered it correctly was the same as the number of students that didnt answer the question at all. The data once again shows that Lansing had the most students struggle and Troy had the least amount. The most common misconception across districts was cross-multiplying, followed by finding a common denominator and then adding the fractions. Looking at Owossos results, again we see that there is a little bit of improvement from middle school to high school. For the most part a lot of the percentages for each method are very similar between the middle school and high school with the exception of many more students in the middle school finding a common denominator and multiplying the numerator than in the high school. The implications of our findings in regards to teaching tell us many things about students understanding of fractions. Students make many common errors when both adding and multiplying fractions and it is clear many do not know what to do for most problems. Through our interviews we conducted we discovered many of our students were able to explain the rules of adding and multiplying fractions to us. However, when the students were pressed they could not explain what some of the key terms meant, like common denominator. This told us that many of the students know the rules and can recite those but are unable to conceptualize and understand what these rules mean. Based on these findings we have come up with some strategies, which we believe could be an implication when teaching fractions in the future. When teachers begin teaching fractions, it is important that they ensure students

understand what fractions are. The use of pictures is a key strategy to exemplifying what a fraction is. What we have found is that when performing operations on fractions the students do not understand what the operation means. Once the students get a key understanding of what a fraction is and what it means to compute the operation, they will have a better understanding of fractions. Also, making sure they comprehend the rules and conceptualize them rather than just memorizing. One strategy we thought of to help them conceptualize the rules of fractions would be to give the students a calculator and compute different fractions. Then the students would be asked to observe patterns to generate the rules. Since students will be able to generate rules, they will be more opt to apply the rules and not make up rules they are not mathematically correct. When students develop the rules, memorization is no longer necessary and the rules will make more sense.

Works Cited Charalambous, C.Y., & Pitta-Pantazi, D. (2007). Drawing on a theoretical model to study students understandings of fractions. Educational Studies in Mathematics, 64(3). Retrieved fromhttp://www.springerlink.com/content/0610g3863800k582/ Sadi, A. (2007). Misconceptions in numbers. UGRU Journal, 5, Retrieved from http://www.ugru.uaeu.ac.ae/UGRUJournal/UGRUJournal_files/SR5/MIN.pdf
Thompson P. & Saldanha L. (2007). Fractions and Multiplicative Reasoning. In J. Kilpatrick, W.G. Martin & D. Schifter (Eds.), A Research Companion to Principles and Standards for School Mathematics (pp. 95-113). Reston, VA: NCTM.

Appendix
Table One: Adding Fractions Adding Fractions (a/b + c/d) Add across top and bottom Add across top and bottom (common denominators) Add numerator multiply denominator (visa versa) No denominator Correct Right Procedure, calculation error Cross Multiply No Answer Skipped problem with different denominators Table Two: Multiplying Fractions Multiplying Fractions (a/b * c/d) Find CD Multiply across Top Find CD Add Cross Multiply No Denominator Add numerator multiply denominator (visa versa) Correct Right procedure, calculation error No Answer Skipped problem with different denominators Lansing Owosso Owosso HS HS MS 19.12% 1.85% 2.94% 10.53% Cass Tech 0% 4% Troy HS Total 1.72% 8.50% 1.72% 9.38% Lansing Owosso Owosso HS HS MS 23.53% 27.78% 21.80% 0.00% 4.41% 0.00% 0.00% 0.00% 1.85% 6.02% 11.28% 0.75% Cass Tech Troy HS Total

21.42% 0.00% 19.35% 0.00% 1.72% 2.64% 7.14% 0.00% 5.87% 0.00% 1.72% 0.88% 57.14% 91.38% 54.55% 10.71% 5.17% 9.97% 0.00% 0.00% 4.99% 0.00% 0.00% 2.05% 3.57% 0.00% 3.52%

32.35% 55.56% 48.87% 7.35% 5.88% 14.81% 11.28% 24.07% 0.00% 0.00% 0.00%

10.29% 0.00% 16.18% 0.00%

12.96% 15.79%

13.24% 24.07% 17.29% 0.00% 3.70% 0.00% 2.94% 7.41% 3.76%

3.57% 1.72% 13.78% 0.00% 0.00% 0.59% 4% 2% 3.81%

25.00% 38.89% 35.34% 8.82% 11.11% 12.03% 5.26% 0.00%

78.57% 91.38% 46.92% 7.14% 1.72% 9.09% 0.00% 0.00% 7.04% 4% 0% 0.88%

25.00% 0.00% 2.94% 0.00%

Graph One: Adding Fractions

Adding Fractions (a/b + c/d)

Skipped problem with different No Answer Cross Multiply Right Procedure, calculation error Correct No denominator Add numerator multiply Add across top and bottom 0.00% 20.00% 40.00% 60.00% 80.00% 100.00% Troy HS Cass Tech Owosso MS Owosso HS Lansing HS

Graph Two: Multiplying Fractions

Multiplying Fractions (a/b * c/d)

Skipped problem with different No Answer Right procedure, calculation error Correct Add numerator multiply No Denominator Cross Multiply Find CD Add Find CD Multiply across Top 0.00% 20.00% 40.00% 60.00% 80.00% 100.00% Troy HS Cass Tech Owosso MS Owosso HS Lansing HS