DescriptionIn this task-based interview Brandon, a 10-year-old 4th grade boy, shares his ideas with the researcher, Amy Martino, about two problems that he had solved in earlier class sessions. In the first class session Brandon had worked with a partner on the following task: Your group has two colors of Unifix Cubes. Work together and make as many different towers four cubes high as is possible when selecting from two colors. The students were asked to develop a way to convince themselves and their classmates that their solution was complete and included no duplicates. In the second session students, again working with partners, were given the following problem: A local pizza shop has asked us to help design a form to keep track of certain pizza choices. They offer a cheese pizza with tomato sauce. A customer can then select from the following toppings: peppers, sausage, mushrooms and pepperoni. How many different choices for pizza does a customer have? Find a way to convince each other that you have accounted for all possibilities. When asked by the interviewer to reflect about how he had solved the Pizza Problem, Brandon reconstructed and explained the chart that he had developed in the earlier class session. When the researcher asked Brandon if this problem reminded him of any others, he referred to the Towers problem and then rebuilt his solution set of towers, compared the two solutions, and showed that the problems were equivalent in structure.his video focuses on the student. There is another view that focuses on his work.
RightsThe video is protected by copyright. It is available for reviewing and use within the Video Mosaic Collaborative (VMC) portal. Please contact the Robert B. Davis Institute for Learning (RBDIL) for further information about the use of this video.
Related Publication Type: Excerpt or clip creation Label: Video clips created from video footage B43, Interview with Brandon about the Towers and Pizza problem (student view), Grade 4, April 5, 1993, raw footage Name: PUP Math Brandon interview