What is Newmans Error Analysis?

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.

The Five Newman Questions / Requests

1. 2. 3. 4. Please read the question to me. If you dont know a word, leave it out. Tell me what the question is asking you to do. Tell me how you are going to find the answer. 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.
During request 4, listen carefully to what the student says and decide where you think the first breakdown point is classify the error/mistake.

The Newman Error Analysis/mistake procedure

These five requests can be used to determine why students make mistakes with written mathematical questions. A student wishing to solve a written mathematics problem typically has to work through five basic steps:

Reading Read the problem Comprehension Comprehend what is read Transformation Carrying out a transformation from the words of the problem to Process Skills Encoding
the selection of an appropriate mathematical strategy Applying the process skills demanded by the selected strategy Encoding the answer in an acceptable written form

If, when a child attempts the question for the second time, he/she gets the correct answer and, after the teacher has listened to the answers to the Newman requests, the teacher is convinced that the child originally made a careless slip, the, the error would be classified as careless.

Error Classification:
Reading Errors the child could not read a key word or symbol in the written problem
to the extent that this prevented him/her from proceeding further along an appropriate problem-solving path. but has not grasped the overall meaning of the words and, therefore, was unable to proceed further along an appropriate problem-solving path.

Comprehension Errors the child has been able to read all the words in the question, Transformation Errors the child had understood what the questions wanted him/her
to find out but was unable to identify the operation, or sequence of operations need to solve the problem. operations, but did not know the procedures necessary to carry out these operations accurately. not express this solution in an acceptable written form.

Process Skills Errors the child identified an appropriate operation, or sequence of Encoding Errors the child correctly worked out the solution to the problem, but could

Conducting the interview

Talk to the child in a friendly way. Tell them your reason for talking to them is to help them with their mathematics. Tell the child you want them to do some problems. Give the child the question / answer sheet and ask him to answer a question. Encourage the child to show any working. Say nothing more till they are finished. Ask the child some or all of the five Newman questions/requests for the particular questions being considered. Do not help the child at any stage, but note briefly any of the childs answers which are especially revealing. Decide on the Newman error classification, that you believe corresponds to where the child got off track.

Newman Error Analysis procedure & Error Classification: Student: __________________________________ date: ____________________
1. 2. 3. 4. 5. Please read the question to me. If you dont know a word, leave it out. Tell me what the question is asking you to do. Tell me how you are going to find the answer. Show me what to do to get the answer. Talk aloud as you do it, so that I can understand how you are thinking. Now, write down your answer to the question.
Reading Comprehension Transformation Process Skills Encoding

Notes:

Newman Error Analysis procedure & Error Classification: Student: __________________________________ date: ____________________
1. 2. 3. 4. 5. Please read the question to me. If you dont know a word, leave it out. Tell me what the question is asking you to do. Tell me how you are going to find the answer. Show me what to do to get the answer. Talk aloud as you do it, so that I can understand how you are thinking. Now, write down your answer to the question.
Reading Comprehension Transformation Process Skills Encoding

Notes:

Sample problem solving Questions Es1

Henry the octopus has eight legs. On each leg he has two dots. How many dots foes Henry have altogether?

Sam had a straw, a tissue box, a stick, a counter and a book. Which of Sams objects is the longest?

Bilal used all the straws to make a shape.

What shape did Bilal make?

Clive has five crayons in his hand. I gave Clive two more. How many crayons does Clive have now?

Sarah put a black dot in each box.

How many more dots does Sarah need to add to make ten?

Stage 1
Marcus shared twenty smarties between four friends. Draw Marcus friends and how many smarties they each got.

Altogether, how many corners are there in 4 triangles and 2 squares?

Cindy walked placing on foot in front after the other to measure the length of her classroom. Cindys answer was 40 feet. Estimate how many of your feet it would take to measure the length of your classroom. ___________ How many feet did it actually take? _____________

This clock shows the time Alex began swimming laps in the pool.
11 10 9 8 7 6 5 4 12 1 2 3

It takes Alex half an hour to swim 20 laps. Alex swims 40 laps. What time did Alex finish swimming the laps?

Stage 2
A soccer game lasts one and a half hours. Jasmine played for 20 minutes in the first half and she played for all of second half. Altogether, how many minutes did Jasmine play for?

The perimeter of this equilateral triangle is 18cm. What is the length of each side?

Ali bought a gelato. It cost $3.20. He paid for it with a $5 note. What is the least number of coins he should receive as change?

Johns school had a fete. At the gate, every 10th child got a ticket for a free ride. 115 children went through the gate. How many free tickets were given out? Drac had four coins in his pocket. The coins add up to 90 cents. How many 10 cent coins does Drac have in his pocket?

The distance from Olympic Park Railway Station to Stadium Australia is 400 metres. Tom walked from the station to the stadium and back. How far did he walk.

Stage 3
These are 4 faces of a triangular prism.

Draw the 5th face of the triangular prism.

Petra opened a carton of 12 eggs. Four of the eggs were cracked. What fraction of the eggs was cracked?

Kelly is taller than Mike. Joseph is the second tallest. There are five children altogether. Paul is shorter than Mike. Mariam is taller than Mike but shorter than Joseph. From tallest to shortest, put the children in order. Who is only taller than one person?

John made a closed prism. It had five faces. Three faces were rectangular. Draw and name Johns prism.