The Australian educator Anne Newman (1977) suggested five significant prompts to help determine where errors may occur in students attempts to solve written problems. She asked students the following questions as they attempted problems.1. Please read the question to me. If you don't know a word, leave it out.2. Tell me what the question is asking you to do.3. Tell me how you are going to find the answer.4. Show me what to do to get the answer. "Talk aloud" as you do it, so that I can understand how you are thinking.5. Now, write down your answer to the question.These five questions can be used to determine why students make mistakes with written mathematics questions.
Error analysis - how can we incorporate this into students final evaluation mark? Isn't having students understand their errors a key part in education? Maybe evaluation doesn't finish once you've handed the assignment/test back?