Identify student strengths and needs for future planning (as connected to students learning goals and standards). Engagement in this project will support teacher candidates in thinking about the ways in which students in early childhood mathematics settings exhibit both conceptual understanding and procedural fluency.
Beyond that, this project will provide opportunities teacher candidates to analyze both quantitative (numerical or categorical) and qualitative (descriptive or narrative) data and documenting student thinking and evaluating student thinking on a rubric.
Skills: The purpose of this assignment is to help you practice and implement the following skills, which are essential to your success in this course, as well as in teaching mathematics:
• Evaluating a performance assessment on a rubric
• Analyzing student’s problem-solving strategies
• Report on qualitative and quantitative data gained during assessment
Knowledge: This assignment will help you become familiar with the following important content and pedagogical knowledge in mathematics education:
• Identification of the ways in which young math learners demonstrate conceptual understanding and procedural fluency
• Strategies used to solve various problems involving the four operations
• Using questions to facilitate mathematical thinking and discourse during learning
• Using assessment to identify students’ strengths and future learning
• Plan for students’ future learning from strengths
• Make connections between students’ learning and standards
Task:
For this project, you will be given a set of second student data to us for your analysis. The participants for this data set are second grade mathematicians. You will be working on this project in class with your group, and then finishing it up on your own.
With your group analyze the students’ work (provided as a separate file) and provide a score on the provided rubric. Your group SHOULD NOT divide up the work samples but rather should come to a consensus about where to place each student on the rubric.
Once you have scored each student work sample, with your group discuss the following (I highly suggest having a group member take notes of your discussion):
• What quantitative (numerical or categorical) trends do you see in the whole class data? Summarize student learning via a chart or graph.
• What qualitative (narrative) trends do you see in the whole class data?
• What strengths did the students demonstrate?
• What struggles, partial understandings, and confusions students demonstrate in their work?
• What are the underlying mathematical ideas and misunderstandings these strengths and struggles are connected with (i.e prior learning experiences)?
• What would be an appropriate next step/targeted objective for the class? Use the data to justify your response.
On your own you will write up a summary the student data and your experience. The summary should be a representation of what you learned about the students’ knowledge and draw upon evidence from the student works as well as make connections to course readings. Be sure to attend to the following in your reflection:
a. How did this experience impact your abilities as a future teacher?
b. Specifically, how did this experience impact your ability to collect and analyze student data?
c. What quantitative (numerical or categorical) trends do you see in the whole class data? Summarize student learning via a chart or graph
d. What qualitative (narrative) trends do you see in the whole class data?
e. What strengths did the students demonstrate?
f. What struggles, partial understandings, and confusions students demonstrate in the interview?
g. What are the underlying mathematical misunderstandings these strengths and struggles are connected with (i.e prior learning experiences)?