Assessment ◆ 157Mayer, 1987; Cummins et al., 1988). Specifically, many of the errors in
comprehension have to do with language.
In 1977, Australian educator Anna Newman discussed five steps that
students need to work through in order to solve a word problem
successfully:
- reading the problem/READING
- comprehending what was read/COMPREHENSION
- transforming the words into a numerical representation/
TRANSFORMATION - doing the calculations/PROCESS SKILLS
- writing and explaining the answer/ENCODING
Her research showed that over 50^ percent of errors that children make
occur in the first three steps—before they even begin to do the calcula-
tions! She suggested a five-step protocol for word problem solving error
analysis. She would ask the following questions. The five questions link
to the five processes (noted alongside them). Wherever the student has a
breakdown, this is where the teaching point begins. Now, if asked to redo
the problem and the student gets it right and can self-correct, Newman
labels this as a careless error. All other errors are teaching points.
We can learn so much from students’ error patterns! We need to look
closely at what they are doing and what they are not doing. White (2005)
states, “Mistakes can become entrenched, so error analysis is the first step
towards doing something relevant which will remove the cause of the
mistake.” The Newman error analysis/interview protocol can help us figure
out what is going on with students with word problems. White (2005) gives
a great synopsis of the protocol. Here is a summary of that synopsis.
The Five Newman Questions/Requests
- Please read the question to me: (This identifies Reading Errors.)
Be sure to ask the student to tell you if they don’t know a word.
(Put an R if there are errors here.) A reading error is when the
student’s reading prevents him or her from understanding the
problem. If they cannot read key words or understand key sym-
bols in the problem so much so that it prevents them from under-
standing the problem, then this is classified as a reading error. - Tell me, what the question is asking you to do. (This identifies
Comprehension Errors.) (Record a C if the student has problems.)
A comprehension error is when the student can read the whole
problem but doesn’t understand what to do. They did not get
the big picture of what was going on in the problem and therefore
could not proceed with the problem.