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Holly Tyler

SLA Project Submission 1

Assessment Administered: 11/15/13

Grade Level: 3rd

Content Area: Math

The purpose of this assessment is to gauge students’ mastery of the

math subjects being learned in class. These include ballpark estimates,

measuring line segments in inches and centimeters, finding the perimeter,

certainty, subtracting money values, converting inches to feet and yards,

creating line plots, finding the minimum, maximum, range, and median of a

set of data.

The outcomes being assessed are:

3. MD.5 Recognize area as an attribute of plane figures and

understand concepts of area measurement.

3.MD.6 Measure areas by counting unit squares (square

cm, square m, square in, square ft, and improvised units)

3. NBT.1Use place value understanding to round whole

numbers to the nearest 10 or 100.

3. NBT.2 Fluently add and subtract within 1000 using

strategies and algorithms based on place value, properties

of operations, and/or the relationship between addition and

subtraction. (A range of algorithms may be used.)

2. MD.2 Measure the length of an object twice, using length

units of different lengths for the two measurements;

describe how the two measurements relate to the size of

the unit chosen. (aligns with MCEs)

Description/Discussion of Administration:

The 3rd grade classroom in which this test was administered had a fairly

mixed demographic makeup of about, almost half Caucasian. There were 25

students, 12 boys and 13 girls. The test was a “progress check” within a

math unit on mainly measuring in inches and centimeters and converting

units of measurement. The classroom was a very open and colorful room,

there were many decorations on the walls including exemplary student work.

Students had assigned seats in a girl, boy, girl, boy pattern at tables.

To prepare students for the assessment, I came a little early and

introduced myself as a soon-to-be teacher. I spent a little time letting

students ask me questions and then asked them a few questions about what

they had been learning in their math lessons. A few students answered with

some of the math concepts they had discussed. I told them that I had talked

to their teacher about their math lessons and I knew they had done a review

for their test the day before. I told them to try to remember everything they

had learned and to try their hardest to do well on the test. I instructed them

to write their names on the test when they received it and to wait until it was

instructed to begin.

The cooperating teacher had asked me to do a quick overview of the test

with the students to help them understand the questions. After I had handed

out the test to all the students, I read each question to them and stated a

brief summary of what the question was asking. For example, question #1

says, “Make a ballpark estimate for each problem. Write the number model.

1. 248 – 103 = ?” For this question, I read the instructions and the problem

and then stated, “When you practiced making ballpark estimates, you

rounded your numbers up or down to the nearest ten before making your

estimate.” This doesn’t seem like something I would think to do before a

test, but because the teacher asked me to, I did. The students were not

especially receptive during this time and seemed distracted by their tests.

After I finished going through the questions, I told them to raise their

hands if they had any questions and when they were finished to turn over

their tests and work on an anchor activity their teacher had suggested. Then

I let the students start. While the students took their test, I navigated the

room, coming to students who had questions. There was barely a minute of

rest in between questions and there were often multiple students with their

hands up. The cooperating teacher also answered questions during this time.

The students overall seemed to behave in a normal fashion. There was a

bit of excitement prior to the test, which I believe was mostly due to having a

stranger in the classroom. Once the test started, the students all seemed

quite invested in the test, except one or two students who needed to be

reminded to work on their tests. Many students had questions during the

test. When they finished their tests, most students sat quietly at their desks

and worked.

Overall, I felt that the administration of the test went well. The students

were well-behaved and followed directions for the most part. There were

some distractions during the test. At one point, another teacher came in to

talk to the cooperating teacher and many students were distracted by their

conversation. Another distraction was the cooperating teacher, who talked

very loudly when answering students’ questions. She also often interrupted

the test to clarify something about the test if she had more than one student

ask about it. Despite these interruptions, I think the testing went fine.

When grading the test, I had a little difficulty reading the handwriting.

This was mostly because I was grading copies. I think that teachers get to

know their students’ handwriting as well and grading becomes easier for

them. The only difficult part of scoring this test for me were these two

questions in the short answer section:

#8: Write one thing that you are certain will happen today.

#9: Write one thing that you are certain will not happen today.

These were difficult to assess because some students wrote answers

that required the grader to have existing knowledge about the student. For

example, one student answered #9 with “my sister will come home.” This is

hard to judge because I do not know if this student’s sister really will come

home or not. However, I used my best judgment and I found it fairly easy to

grade overall. I used the answer key which came with the book to grade the

test.

Display and Interpretation of Results:

The overall number of students that participated in the assessment was

25. None of the students had modifications. There were 26 questions total.

These were comprised of 15 fill-in-the-blank questions, 3 short answer, and 8

interpretive. The test was written by the Wright Group/ McGraw-Hill publisher

and corresponded with the workbook students used.

The scores were as follows: The mean percentage score out of 100 was

47%. The median was 46%. The mode was 69%. The range was 69. The

highest number correct out of 26 was 20, with a percentage correct of 77%.

The lowest number correct was 2 out of 26 with an 8% score. The number of

correct answers given by students is shown in Figure 1 and 2.

Figure 1:Total

Number correct

out of 26

Number of students scoring the number out

of 2520 119 118 417 1

16 114 113 312 211 210 49 15 23 12 1

Figure 2: Test Score Distribution:

Figure 3:

In Figure 1, 2 and 3 above, one can clearly see that the results of this test

were not positive. The highest score achieved on the test was 20/26; 77%.

The two scores achieved most were 18 (69%) and 10 (38%). A majority of

Student Gender# Correct

% Score

1 M 19 732 M 18 693 M 12 464 M 10 385 M 11 426 M 5 197 M 9 358 M 5 199 M 18 6910 M 12 4611 M 10 3812 M 2 813 F 17 6514 F 3 1215 F 10 3816 F 18 6917 F 14 5418 F 13 5019 F 13 5020 F 11 4221 F 18 6922 F 20 7723 F 16 6224 F 10 3825 F 13 50

the students scored at or lower than a 55% on this assessment. The score

distribution is interesting, Figure #2 shows that many scores between 20 and

2 were accplished by just one student. Figure 4 shows the overall student

scores by percent.

Figure 4:

Average: Max: Min: Mode: Range: Median:0

10

20

30

40

50

60

70

80

90

Student Scores By Percent

Student Scores

Figure 5 below shows the overall average, minimum, maximum and range

of the boys in the class versus the girls. The totals for each gender do not

differ vastly. The averaged scores for the girls in the class were higher in

each category, but not hugely. The range for each gender was the same,

signifying that the learning gap in this subject was equal for each gender.

Figure 5:

Boys Girls

42

52

7377

812

65 65

Overall Percentage Score by GenderAverage Max Min Range

Figure 6:

M M M M M M M M M M M M F F F F F F F F F F F F F0

5

10

15

20

25

Number Correct By Gender

# Correct

I believe that test assessed students at Middle and High cognitive

levels. I did not feel that any of the questions were asking the students to

process at a low cognitive level. All of the questions asked students to

analyze, synthesize, evaluate and/or apply. In Figure 6 below you can see

the cognitive level of each question, and Figure 7 shows these in a graphic

format.

Figure 7:

Question Cognitive Level Question Type

1 High Interpretive

2 High Interpretive

3 Middle Fill-in-the-blank




7 High Fill-in-the-blank

8 High Short Answer

9 High Short Answer

10 High Short Answer



13 Middle Interpretive









22 High Interpretive





Figure 8:

Cognitive Levels of Questions

HighMiddleLow

Figure 9:

In the above graph, you can see that the two questions most students

answered correctly were question #8 and #9. These were the two questions

mentioned before that were a little harder to grade. The questions were:


#9: Write one thing that you are certain will not happen today.

These were the only two questions on the test that addressed the concept of

“certainty” and both were high level questions. An average of 23.5 out of 25

students answered these questions right, indicating that the majority of the

class has mastered the concept of “certainty”.

The two questions that were answered most incorrectly by students

were #23 and #24. These questions were medium level and they asked

students to interpret the results of a chart. The two questions were:

#23: What is the maximum (greatest) number of books read? ___books

#24: What is the minimum (least) number of books read? ____ books

Instead of using the chart given to them to answer the question, most

students used the line plot that they were asked to create. On their line plot,

they plotted which amounts of books students most commonly read. Below is

an example (numbers are different for point distribution. 17=23 and 18=24):

Figure 10:

As you can see, the student answered 2 for the maximum, because 2

was the maximum on the plot line he or she created. I believe most students

missed these two questions because they are poorly written, and not

because they do not know the meaning of “maximum” and “minimum.” For

this reason, I do not believe that these questions properly assessed the

learning target at hand.

The highest scoring student in the class was Student #22, a female.

The questions this student missed were:

#12: the perimeter is ____cm

This question was one of the most missed on the test, only 8 students

answered it correctly. This question required students to add up all the

sides of the shape to find the perimeter. Most students missed this

question because they added wrong or they made a small measuring

mistake.

#18: 6ft = ____yd

This question was among those most missed overall. Only 6 Students

answered this question correctly. I believe it was missed so much

because the students did not know the content and just guessed.

Students did much better with the questions that asked them to

convert inches to feet and seemed less comfortable with converting to

yards.

#19: 12ft = ____yd

This question, like the one above, was missed by many students. Only

5 students got this question correct and I believe it is for the same

reason that they are not comfortable converting with the yard unit of

measurement.

#22: Use the data from the tally chart to create a line plot. You may use your

Student Reference book to help you.

More students actually got this answer right. It is a high level question

that 11 of the 26 students answered correctly. I was surprised that the

student who scored highest overall missed this question, but student

#22 did not really attempt to answer it. This student only labeled the

plot line 0-7 (which is correct) but did nothing else. I think that this

student could not remember how to organize the data and gave up.

#24: What is the minimum (least) number of books read? ____ books

This was one of the two most missed questions. This student answered

with”0” which was the minimum value of books possible. Again, I

believe this question and the one before it were confusing to students

and did not accurately measure the learning standard because it was

poorly written.

#25: What is the range for the number of books read? ____ books

This question was answered right by only 5 out of 26 students. I think

this was due to the confusion of the previous two questions, in general.

However, student #22 answered “4” while the answer was “5.” I think

this indicates that the student had a small error in their subtraction,

rather than confusion about the question.

I think that the fact that the highest score achieved by students was only a

20 out of 26 indicates that the learning standards at hand need more

instruction and practice. This student shows some mastery of some of the

concept, but overall still shows a decent amount of confusion. Student #22

does not show mastery of measuring & finding the perimeter of a shape and

does not show mastery of converting inches to feet and yards. I would

suggest further instruction of these standards.

A middle scoring student in the class was Student #18, a female.

This student was in an interesting situation because she was put in a 3rd

grade classroom the previous year, due to an overpopulation of 2nd grade

students and not enough teachers. She was one of the highest scoring

students upon entering the 2nd grade, so they placed her in a 3rd grade class.

This is her second year in a 3rd grade classroom, so one can presume she has

at least heard some of these learning targets before.

The questions this student missed were:

#3 & #4: Measure each line segment to the nearest ½ inch.

#5: Measure each line segment to the nearest ½ centimeter.

#11: Measure the sides of the polygon in centimeters.

#12: The perimeter [of the above figure] is ____cm.

#13: Draw a rectangle with an area of 16 square centimeters

#16: ____in = 4 ft

#21: Measure the line segment to the nearest ½ centimeter.

#7: Find the perimeter of the rectangle. The perimeter is ____ cm.

All of the above questions asked the student to measure a line or

several lines. This indicates that student #18 has not mastered the

learning standard of measuring to the nearest 1/2in or ½ cm. This

student’s answers for all of her measurements were close to the

correct answer, but wrong by about half a cm or in. The student

understands how to measure, but not what “to the nearest inch”

means. For example, on questions #3 and #4, student #18 answered

“3 ½” and “2 ½”, while the correct answers were “3” and “1 ½”

respectively. It seems that if these questions said “Measure each line

segment in inches,” then the student would have had the correct

answers.

#10: Carl earned $3.00. He spent $2.15 on a toy car. Use P N D Q to show

how much money he had left.

This was another one of the most commonly missed questions on the

test, with only 7 of 26 students answering it correctly. This student

gave the answer “QQQQND” which equals $1.15, while the correct

answer is 85c. This indicates that the student either does not know

how to subtract money amounts equally, or that she does not

understand what the question was asking. I would not qualify this as a

well-written question because it does not give students very much

room to work and it is hard to determine if students were confused

about the question or if they have not reached the learning target.

#22: Use the data from the tally chart to create a line plot. You may use

your Student Reference book to help you.

#23: What is the maximum (greatest) number of books read? ____ books

#26: What is the median for the number of books read by children?

____ books

The lowest scoring student in the class was Student #12, a male.

The only questions that this student answered correctly were the

following:


#9: Write one thing that you are certain will not happen today

These were the two questions that were harder to grade and that the most

students answered correctly. These two questions evaluated the student’s

mastery of the concept of “certainty.” This student answered correctly

indicating that he has mastered the concept of “certainty” but no other

concepts.

Most of the answers Student #12 gave were completely inaccurate, if

answered at all; many of them looked like guesses. This indicates that

Student #12 did not reach the learning targets.

Because the cooperating teacher did not supply me with any addition

information about Student #12, so there is only so much I can hypothesize

from the results. This student could have been absent a lot during the

instruction for these learning goals, or this student might legitimately not

understand any of the concepts present. I think the cooperating teacher

should keep a close eye on Student #12, as he could have a learning

disorder or need extra help in math. This student is obviously behind the rest

of the class, but considering the overall scores of the class, his score is not

as awful in relation to a 5/26 in a test with a higher average score.

When the cooperating teacher and I discussed the results of this test, she

knew that her students had not mastered the learning outcomes. The overall

class average was less than 50% and the highest scoring student only scored

a 77%. The cooperating teacher admitted to me she had not thoroughly read

through the questions before administering the test and commented that if

she had, she might have noticed that some of the questions would be

confusing for her students. I think she will use the results to determine which

learning targets she will need to re-teach and perhaps differentiate the way

she teaches them. For instance, the majority of her students know how to

measure a line segment, but do not understand what “to the nearest ½ inch”

means.

Reflection:

This activity was a challenging and very valuable learning experience for

me. I think that I had not realized before how much work goes into assessing

students. I have a newfound respect for the amount of work teachers put

into assessment, grading, and interpreting results.

After completing the administration and analyzing of this test seemed

to be a complete cultivation of all that we have learned over the course of

this semester in this class. While learning the head knowledge of how to

write tests and assess students accurately in class, none of it was made real

for me until I was actually doing these things with real students.

Something I will definitely take into consideration is the way that the

test is written. I never thought about how the way a question is worded can

drastically affect a student’s understanding of it. The questions from this test

make sense to adults, but small details can confuse a student more easily. I

think that I would be tempted to take the easy route and test my students

using the test from the textbook instead of writing my own. But I want to

challenge myself to make sure that any assessments I give my students will

accurately measure their understanding of the learning goals. If this means I

have to spend extra time writing my own tests, then so be it.

2. Submission:

a. Name your project using your last name, project name, and submission number (ex. Smith SLA – 1 )

b. Submit your project in Word as an email attachment.

c. Email message should contain:

Your last name, if different than your email name The time your class meets Peer editor’s name (first and last) Any information you feel I may need before reading your

project

d. As a separate attachment in your SLA submission email, include an electronic copy of the test and scoring key, which may be the same document. (This copy may need to be scanned. Scanning devices are available in the computer lab at no cost to you.)

e. Also include a copy of any rubric that you used to score student test question.

Identify who developed the rubric. Explain the appropriateness of using this rubric. Explain the ease of using the rubric to score. Explain the accuracy of scoring using the rubric. Would you change the rubric? How?

If no rubric was used, would it have been helpful to use a rubric? Why? Or, why not?

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