Week 11 Reflection: Assessment

Northwestern University. Assessment Cycle. [Online Image] Retrieved from http://www.northwestern.edu/searle/assessment-of-student-learning/assessment-process/index.html#!

To start of this week we had our last two presenters, Anthony and Alexa, present their activities. I was in Anthony’s group this week where we focused on technology and math.  The website that we used is found here. The activity focused in on grade 7 fractions. On the website, we were able to use online manipulatives to help us solve the problems. This was a great tool for we were able to visualize the fractions in the problem and use the online blocks to help us solve the problems. This tool can be used in multiple ways in the classroom. It can be used in a whole class setting where the teacher is teaching a lesson for the beginning of the unit on the whiteboard and uses these online tools to help teach orally and visually to the students. The teacher can make the lesson interactive by inviting students to come up to the computer to use the online manipulatives to solve a problem for the class so that the whole class can see what is being explained. This tool can also be used individually for students to work on their own with the online manipulatives to work on problems. This tool allows all students to participate in using manipulatives and not having to worry about there not being enough physical materials to use as manipulatives, and it also prevents a mess being made. Teachers just need to ensure that they have the proper equipment in the class for everyone to use in order to harness the online tool. Overall I found the tool to be very useful for in the classroom, and it is also a tool that students can access at home on the computer to aid them in homework.

Coming back together as a class, this weeks focus was on assessment. We determined that assessment “involves the multiple steps of collecting data on a child's development and learning, determining its significance in light of the program goals and objectives, incorporating the information into planning for individuals and programs, and communicating the findings to parents and other involved parties.” (Hills, 1992, p. 43) We saw that there are 2 types of assessment; formative assessment and summative assessment. We use assessment basically for improving student’s performance. There is assessment AS learning, assessment FOR learning and assessment OF learning. In assessment for learning, we looked at a great assessment piece “My Favourite Number” which can be found here. The concept of this assessment piece is to provide feedback to students to help them advance their learning. The teacher provided a warm-up routine that allows them to see who understands the math concept being taught, They collect everyone’s answer and makes a ‘yes’ and ‘no’ pile determined if the student got the answer right or wrong. From the no pile, the teacher chooses her favourite wrong answer to share with the class. The class talks about first all of the right aspects of the answer. From there they determine what the mistakes are and fix the answer. This method allows for students to know that it is alright to make mistakes and the whole class is benefiting from this learning experience.

Compton,M. Assessment. [Online Image] Retrieved from https://www.tes.com/lessons/LSRCUr88b6Xwiw/assessment-for-learning

Week 10 Reflection- Data Management and Probability

This week’s class focused on Data and Probability. In this strand students learn about different ways to gather, organize, and display data. Different types of data are learned and techniques are developed to analyze the data, which include determining measures of central tendency and examining the distribution of the data. Within probability students explore probability by conducting probability experiments and using probability models to simulate situations. Connecting probability and data management to real-world problems helps make the learning relevant to students.

This week I was one of the activity leaders and focused on data collection and displaying data. To start off the activity I reviewed with the group what a number line and stem and leaf plot were since these were the two methods in which we would be displaying and organizing our data. This activity focused on the collection of data so I got the students to record their jump measurements that they made. From here we organized the data from least to greatest so we could arrange it more easily on our number line. As a group we determined at what intervals the number line should go up based on our data numbers. It was determined that we should go up by tens for it is a friendly number and one that worked well with our data. Once we saw the data displayed on the number line we then arranged the data on a stem and plot graph, which allowed us to view the data quickly. From here we were able to determine which two students recorded the farthest jumping distances.

Stem and Leaf Plots. (2017). [Online Image]. Retrieved November 17, 2017, from http://www.mathsisfun.com/data/stem-leaf-plots.html

The big ideas or main concepts in Data Management and Probability are:

-collection and organization of data

-data relationships

-probability

We looked at teaching the strand through problem solving and conducted a few of the activities in class. One of the activities we had to organize our data in groupings of 10-19, 20-29 and so forth up to 50-59. Once we organized our data we displayed it in a histogram form. The class compared this grouping and groupings of 4 to one another and talked about the different representations. It was said that both portrayals were beneficial, it just depended on what information one wanted to get out of the representation that would determine which one was better. The smaller grouping allowed more specific information and detail to be taken away from the graph while the larger grouping allowed for a general idea at a quick glance.

Fallavollita, E. (November 17, 2017). Data Histogram. [Image]. 

Until next week, happy mathing!