The client does not have a full conceptual understanding of subtraction which tends to also affect her procedural understanding of the concept. Our client does understand that subtraction is taking a certain numerical value from another numerical value. Our client has troubles identifying when she needs to do subtraction or addition in word problems; she will do addition unless told specifically that she needs to do subtraction (as shown in question 1). She cannot tell which operation she needs to use in certain problems; A problem on the assessment read “Write a subtraction sentence that matches with the addition: (6 + 8 = 14). Her answer to this question was 6 – 8 = 0. The client has a slight conceptual understanding that subtraction is the inverse of addition, but she doesn’t understand how they relate completely.
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The client does know that she can’t take a bigger number away from a smaller number with the kind of subtraction that she is currently doing in school, but she did not recognize that 14 was her whole number and that 6 and 8 were parts of her whole number. Instead of taking the whole and subtracting a part from it (14 – 8 = 6 or 14 – 6 = 8) she used the numbers in the order that they were already in and left the 14 out completely. She did understand that 8 is bigger than 6 and that she would not have any amount of that 6 remaining. Another problem read “How many more is 70 than 50?” She put down a question mark for her answer, clearly showing that she does not understand the question and has a lack of understanding of academic language that relates to subtraction. Our client does not understand the concept of subtraction fully so she takes what she knows within a problem and works it out. She will leave out whatever she doesn’t understand within a given
The client does know that she can’t take a bigger number away from a smaller number with the kind of subtraction that she is currently doing in school, but she did not recognize that 14 was her whole number and that 6 and 8 were parts of her whole number. Instead of taking the whole and subtracting a part from it (14 – 8 = 6 or 14 – 6 = 8) she used the numbers in the order that they were already in and left the 14 out completely. She did understand that 8 is bigger than 6 and that she would not have any amount of that 6 remaining. Another problem read “How many more is 70 than 50?” She put down a question mark for her answer, clearly showing that she does not understand the question and has a lack of understanding of academic language that relates to subtraction. Our client does not understand the concept of subtraction fully so she takes what she knows within a problem and works it out. She will leave out whatever she doesn’t understand within a given