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solve it student thinking

Jo Ann Cady and Sherry L. Bair

big solutions to little problems

NEIL PODOLL/THINKSTOCK

This Solve It
task appeared
in the
December
2014/January
2015 issue:

The Fire Pit

A local company installs fire pits in residential areas. The basic
pit is installed in the center of an 8 ft. 8 ft. square concrete
pad. Some people want larger seating areas around the pit, so
the company will add 1 ft. 1 ft. concrete pavers around the
pad. For example, to make a pad that is 12 ft. 12 ft., builders will add 2 rows of pavers around the 8 8 pad, as shown
below, by using a 2 foot wide border of pavers.
The owner of the company must calculate the number of
pavers he needs to build a border around the original 8 8 pad
that has any whole number for its border. Can you help him
find a formula that will work?

This department shares creative solutions

to the problems presented in Solve It.
Edited by Jo Ann Cady, [email protected],
and Sherry L. Bair, [email protected].

68

CCSSM: Standards 6EE.2a; 6EE2b; 6EE2c; 6EE.9; 7EE.4a; and 7EE.4b

MATHEMATICS TEACHING IN THE MIDDLE SCHOOL

Vol. 21, No. 2, September 2015

Copyright 2015 The National Council of Teachers of Mathematics, Inc. www.nctm.org. All rights reserved.
This material may not be copied or distributed electronically or in any other format without written permission from NCTM.

This month, we highlight the work of

seventh graders in Timothy Folgers
class at Elida Middle School in Elida,
Ohio. Folger provided a written
description of how he introduced the
problem to his students, samples of
student work, and a written reflection
of his experience using the Fire Pit
task with his students.
Folger saw this problem as an opportunity to have students model with
mathematics (CCSSMs Standard
for Mathematical Practice 4; CCSSI
2010) and, therefore, devoted several
days to the problem. On the first day,
he provided only the first paragraph
of the problem and the illustration,
hoping that students would focus
on making sense of the scenario and
developing their own questions about
the context of the problem. This
strategy and the tasks high level of
cognitive demand (Stein and Smith
1998) produced a variety of student
responses. Folger said the questions
that students developed regarding the
scenario ranged from lower to higher
levels of cognitive demand.
Folger reported that it was the
second day of the activity when students were presented with the task of
developing a formula to determine the
total number of pavers needed. The
students had not been formally introduced to expressions and equations,
so the Fire Pit problem was their first
foray into this domain. The problem
also presented an opportunity for
students to learn new ideas through
problem solving. His students did have
prior experiences working with situations involving independent and dependent variables when they used ratio
tables to develop the constant rate of
change in proportional relationships.
Although this task did not represent a proportional relationship, their
prior experience did offer an immediate entry point into the exploration
of the problem. By the end of this
day, the majority of students had

Fig. 1 This example of student work contained an explicit formula for the total number
of pavers as x x 64 = y.

constructed a table, comparing the

rows of pavers and the total number
of pavers needed [see figs. 1 and 2].
Some students accomplished this by
drawing pictures [see fig. 3]. Other
students discovered patterns in the
increase of pavers required for an
additional row. A common mistake
that Folger noticed occurred when
students recorded the increase in the
number of pavers from one row to
another as the total number of pavers
rather than the total number of pavers

in all for x rows. The use of recursive

reasoning is expected of students at
this level, and the mistake that he
noticed was typical. Folger explained
that his students were able to see the
difference between these quantities
and progressed toward a generalization of the pattern and an explicit
formula describing the relationship
between rows of pavers and total
number of pavers.
Folger also noted that many
students showed an immediate interest

Fig. 2 This student constructed a table, comparing the rows of pavers with the total
number of pavers needed.

Vol. 21, No. 2, September 2015

MATHEMATICS TEACHING IN THE MIDDLE SCHOOL

69

Fig. 3 A student drew a fire pit to provide a visual before generalizing.

in applying the concept of perimeter

to calculate the total number of pavers.
Students were capable of describing
the number of pavers on one side as
8 plus 2 times the number of rows (r)
and the perimeter as 4(8 + 2r), but
struggled to determine the total number of pavers needed using the idea of
perimeter. Finding the total number
of pavers using the idea of perimeter is

beyond the scope of the middle school

curriculum, and some students had
begun deriving a formula by looking
at the area of the fire pit. Therefore,
Folger steered the class discussion
toward the concept of area and how it
was measured in square units.
As a result, each sample of student
work that Folger provided shows a formula derived using an area argument.

Fig. 4 This student work did not connect the number of rows of pavers with the area of
the entire square.

The student work in figure 1 included

the formula for the total number of
pavers as x x 64, where x represents
the side length of the entire square.
Although this formula answered the
original question, it did not describe
the explicit relationship between rows
of pavers and total pavers, as shown
in the table. The work described how
the side length, s, can be determined
recursively, given the number of rows
(s = 8 plus 2, then take that number
plus 2 and so on).
The student work in figure 2
contained an explicit formula similar
to the other groups work, relating side
length with total number of pavers,
but it provided an explicit formula for
determining the length of a side (s) of
the entire square given the number of
rows (r) (e.g., s = 8 + 2r). This student
also described the relationship as being
nonproportional because it did not
grow at a constant rate.
The student work in figure 4 contained a table relating the number of
tiles with the area of the entire square.
Although the formula found by the
student, Area 64 = Pavers, correctly
described the table shown, the work
did not show an attempt to connect
how the number of rows of pavers
can be used to determine the area of
the entire square. All student work
samples shown demonstrated how
students made sense of new situations
and how they solved complex problems
by connecting new information with
past experiences on proportions and
measurement.
In his reflection on the task, Folger
stated,
It should be noted that none of my
students were successful at deriving
a formula by analyzing the numerical progression of the pavers, but this
was expected because students in
seventh grade are primarily responsible for identifying and creating
linear relationships [e.g., CCSS.Math.

70

MATHEMATICS TEACHING IN THE MIDDLE SCHOOL

Vol. 21, No. 2, September 2015

Content.7.RP.A.2.C: Represent proportional relationships by equations].

It is interesting that students who
applied a conceptual understanding of
geometric concepts could also explain
what the numbers and variables of
their formula represented. The Fire
Pit problem was a great task that
will lead us further into the domains
of Expressions and Equations, and
Geometry.

THE EDITORS REFLECTION

We provided a challenging task that
could be approached in a variety of
ways. It also presented opportunities
for whole-class discussions about some
key mathematical concepts at a variety
of levels, as evidenced by Folger and his
seventh-grade students. His reflection
was indicative of teachers knowing
their students best and adapting the
task based on their knowledge of their

students mathematical understanding

to help students focus on important
ideas and build on prior knowledge.
Modifications, scaffolding, and
clarification can be done without
lowering the cognitive demand of the
task.
The length of the class period can
also be a constraint that needs to be
addressed; high-level tasks require
several shorter class periods (4560
minutes) or one longer class period (90
minutes). The Common Core State
Standards for Mathematics are challenging for students and teachers alike,
but these types of problems and experiences can help develop the atmosphere
needed in the classroom that will help
teachers feel successful in implementing the mathematical practices in their
classroom and help students achieve
the goals of the Common Cores content standards.

We appreciate the time and effort

that Folger took to submit a response
and his students willingness to share
their work with MTMS readers. Examples of actual middle school students
engaging in high-level tasks provide the
focus for the Solve It department.

REFERENCES
Common Core State Standards Initiative
(CCSSI). 2010. Common Core State
Standards for Mathematics. Washington, DC: National Governors Association Center for Best Practices and the
Council of Chief State School Officers.
http://www.corestandards.org/wpcontent/uploads/Math_Standards.pdf
Stein, Mary Kay, and Margaret Schwan
Smith. 1998. Mathematical Tasks
as a Framework for Reflection: From
Research to Practice. Mathematics
Teaching in the Middle School 3
( January: 26875).

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MATHEMATICS TEACHING IN THE MIDDLE SCHOOL

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