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Comments: Divisibility Conjectures by Students
This is a sample of student responses to an activity where I divided them into groups and assigned each group to make conjectures about two or three columns of the multiplication table. Groups were small, and each column was assigned to more than one group. Students were supposed to email their conjectures to me before class (many didn’t… sigh…), and I compiled the list of conjectures. Then in the next class, students evaluated their classmates’ conjectures and came up with a list of divisibility rules, which included most that were in their text. In previous years, I have written up a list of statements for students to evaluate (see here for example); in this version, the language is mathematically correct, which can actually be more difficult for students initially. These examples are from the first semester of a Math for preK-6 teachers, and there is a wide variation in their sophistication, in both mathematical content and mathematical communication. However, the activity was accessible to all, and all noticed patterns. As a follow-up, I give students a list of conjectures to evaluate. 7/05
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