Outliers: The Story of Success - Essay Example

s the topic comes at a later part of the textbook (Sixth Chapter), students’ prior knowledge infractions would help them greatly in understanding the concept. In fact, ratios are just fractions expressed in another way, though the former is strictly for comparing two discrete quantities only.

            The following questions were used to assess the said student, as well as the analysis of each answer and a recommendation of an instructional plan to further improve the student’s learning:

• If an archer gets ten successful hits out of fifteen attempts, how is this written in terms of ratio?

The student was quick to write three possible answers: 10 to 15, 10:15, and 10/15. However, when asked if it was his final answer, the student took a short pause before simplifying the ratio to 2:3. This tells us that conventions in ratio left more impression on the student than the concept itself. This does not mean to say though that the topic was poorly taught. Given that the lesson is still fresh, the student’s response is not really surprising. What the teacher needs to do next is to further strengthen his students’ knowledge by giving assignments so that they can do a review at home and improve retention in the process. The fact that the student was still able to simplify the ratio suggests that he has somewhat grasped the concept of equivalent ratios, which brings us to the next question.

• Given a ratio of two quantities, how can you find fractions that are equivalent to the ratio?

The student’s answer for this question was to write first the ratio as a fraction and multiply or divide the numerator and denominator by the same factor, which is absolutely correct. When asked however if the said factor should necessarily be a whole number, the student nodded.

To investigate why the student gave an incorrect answer to the last question, I browsed the student’s textbook and looked for the chapter where equivalent fraction was discussed. I found that all examples used a whole number as a factor, which may have led the student into generalizing that the factor can never be a fraction. The book, however, gave a general formula and, where a, b and c can be any number and.

It is important that the minor yet significant misinterpretation of the student be corrected as it encompasses the basics in ratio. As a suggestion, the teacher may give the last question as a quiz to test the students’ understanding of the general formula and explain the answer afterward.

Gladwell (2008) believes that some American children struggle with math because the English language does not give an intuitive idea of its basic rules. Through this activity, I have learned that teachers need to give emphasis on the basics to make things easier for students as the lessons proceed to a more advanced level.