Saturday, October 16, 2010

Reflections

The weeks between September 11 and October 9

I incorporated 2 new assessment tools in my class.  The first was a test similar to the "Fun with Functions" test.  I used the "matching" method to assess my students' understanding of scientific notation.  Each test had a unique sent of cards, so it was very important that the students kept all the cards together and did not swap cards. (Mistake #1). Also, there were about 16 cards per student with only about 10 question on the test. (Mistake #2) For my first class, the assessment worked REALLY well.  However, for the remaining classes, it was a disaster.  Despite specific instructions, several students dropped pieces on the floor, swapped pieces with a neighbor, and took pieces with them when they left the class.  By the end of the day, I was seeing pieces of my test down the hall. And because the pieces were mixed up, several students did in fact have the correct answer, but because they had a card from a different test, their answers didn't always match the answer key for their test number.

It seemed the students were excited about the idea of  the new assessment style, but there were too many cards per student and too much room for error.  In the future, I will do a better job of color coding the cards, creating fewer cards, and requiring the students to write the letter AND the number/answer on their test.  For the first 2 classes, I only required that they write the letter.  For the remaining classes, I required that they write the letter AND answer.  That's how I came to the realization that the pieces were allll mixed up! :(