Summative Assessment
inTASC 6: The teacher understands and uses multiple methods of assessment to engage learners in their own growth, to monitor learner progress, and to guide the teacher’s and learner’s decision making.
Introduction
Mastery of major course concepts can be demonstrated in a variety of ways, so it is only appropriate to assess mastery using multiple methods. Different methods of assessment track different kinds of growth and progress, and it is important to use them together to develop a full picture of a student’s academic growth.
Objective, multiple choice assessment is all aligned to the ACT. Students should feel comfortable with these types of questions by the time they take the ACT in March. These types of assessments give me, and my students, data on their readiness for the ACT. The overall goal for juniors at my school is an 18.5 average on the math portion of the ACT, and I plan to use data collected from summative assessments to push students in my classes to aim higher. The focus on and alignment to the end goal of benchmarking on the ACT shifts the pressure off of unit tests for my students. The tone is different - we use practice tests to identify gaps in learning that we still have time to address.
Not every student demonstrates their full potential in independent examination. Weekly projects gives every student in my class a chance to prove their learning in other ways. On these projects, students apply concepts learned in the classroom to tackle problems people face in the real world. Many students who typically struggle with tests and quizzes can apply the very same concepts to these real world scenarios where they have to use the math to justify their intuition.
Table of Contents
ACT Alignment
ACT Aligned Assessments
The math portion of the ACT is used for my quarterly benchmarks. Students get multiple chances to practice the full 60 question test before the March ACT and receive intensive feedback on the questions they answer. Students receive a grade based on the questions relate to content covered in Algebra. The 17 question diagnostic students took at the beginning of the year were taken from this ACT test. This test was taken as the benchmark at the end of the first quarter to provide a direct comparison. Students who already did well on the diagnostic now have to replicate that performance in 60 question-60 minute testing environment similar to the actual ACT test. Students who struggled knew what they needed to learn by the end of the semester and could align their practice to ACT mastery.
At the beginning of the semester, students took a diagnostic of questions selected from a released ACT test. Problems were selected based on the content covered in the first quarter. These questions were covered explicitly throughout the first quarter as the connected to the content covered in the classroom. Students saw and practiced similar questions that simply replaced the numbers but asked for the same reasoning from students.
Literacy and Numeracy
Practice with the ACT helps, but it doesn’t address the crux of my students’ struggles with the test. Literacy is a huge issue at the school, and students need to practice analyzing and answering open-ended word problems. Intermediate unit assessments use questions from the ACT that relate to the topic while also focusing on procedural fluency with short answer problems.
In an effort to improve ACT readiness, the first unit of the year focused on basic mathematical skills necessary for learning and applying math. Basic order of operations, multiplication, and analysis of word problems worked in tandem to increase students’ capabilities to answer challenging problems.
The quiz for this unit assessed students' ability to express ideas mathematically and effectively. Rather than focusing on getting the correct answer, this quiz assesses procedural fluency and understanding of the task. This involves students more deeply in the process of solving the problem and shows me, as the teacher, which students need more assistance on the topic.
The quiz overall was designed with explication in mind. The actual math required of students is rather simple, but the language and reasoning expectations for each answer were much higher than students are used to seeing. The entire assessment asked students to answer short answer questions with the reasoning modeled by me in class. My students need practice with complex questions and understanding what the question is asking for. Students completed this quiz independently, but worked with their team to compare their answers and share their thinking. The opportunity to rephrase and improve answers is critical in the learning process. The questions were referred back to in the following weeks as they were relevant to the content. Students could earn points back by offering original, insightful and thorough answers to the problems they previously struggled with. This helps invest students in the process of learning and self-assessment.
The sample quizzes below demonstrate the literacy gap in my students that I am trying to address with this type of assessment.
Performance Tasks
Challenge-Based Learning
Mastery of standards and mathematical concepts is not limited to typical assessments. My school operates under a block schedule two days a week, and on these days students complete challenge-based learning projects. The prompts are generally vague open to interpretation so that students engage with the task in the way that interests them.
The first of these projects had students create a graph to represent the incomes of six different families and answer a few questions regarding the data. The premise of the project is very simple but opens doors to lively debates about how to best represent data. Students also engaged in discussions about the implications of the data and the real world implications of income inequality. These projects are graded using rubrics assessing expression of ideas.
Below is an example of student work on this project. They filled the table out properly, and they have some mathematical reasoning for the questions. For more about the implementation of the Fair Housing Wage Project, see Challenge-based Learning.
Conclusion
Summative assessments play a key role in the structure of my classroom’s long term plan. They serve as testaments to student progress and offer time to reflection on mastery of Algebra II’s core concepts. All these assessments lead toward better preparing students for the ACT in March, and the process I have laid out for data collection, analysis and reflection will engage students at all levels.