March Journal Summary

Teaching Children Mathematics. Identifying Logical Necessity by: David Yopp

This article is about teachers being able to identify where students are wrong in their logical reasoning. By teachers understanding the logical necessity of arguments they can better find the exact spot students are faulty at in their arguments. An example the article gives is with factoring. The student understood that numbers could be factored down to the same numbers but did not realize they had to be completely factored for their argument to make sense. By working back through the statements the student made the teacher was able to see that they understood part of the concept, but just messed up at one point in it. The author feels it is very important that preservice teachers know strategies for logical necessity and then gives a few different strategies they can try.

I think this article could be helpful in the classroom. It seems to me that logical necessity would help teachers to really understand what their students are getting rather than just giving counter examples to show their arguments are incorrect. However, I felt this article was a little confusing in it's explanation. It was hard to fully understand what I needed to do to use logical necessity in my classroom. I think it is good though that this article was printed though so that teachers are made aware of this strategy. It would be nice to know more information on how helpful it really is for students. In my own classroom I will make sure to have my students walk through a step by step reasoning of any conclusions they draw. This way I will hopefully be able to see where they are getting off track.