Week 12

Essential question: What evidence am I collecting for my final project – and for what purpose?

            This week I have gained evidence from a Google Form that I had students take. The first time was looking at whether students understood the aspects of y=mx+b. The second time was looking at whether students understood the aspects of solving systems of equations through graphing.

With the first Google Form, I had students take it at the beginning of class and then I put the results up and we decided as a class what concept we needed to cover. They decided as a class to cover identifying slope from a graph and finding the y-intercept. I asked my aide to work with the majority of the group and then I took Kelsey and two other students who struggled with what a y-intercept is and what slope is. I knew we needed to cover these because of the check-in from Friday that I had students fill out on their own (see previous week’s blog). We focused on defining the two concepts on the most basic level. For example, we defined the x- and y-axis and a line. Then we looked at where the line hits the y-axis and defined this as an intercept. I kept drawing lines over and over and they had to identify the intercepts. After working with the individual group of students and the other students practiced with the aide using a worksheet, I had them take the Google Form assessment again. There was growth.

            Another form of evidence I have is homework and class practice work. If students were struggling with a specific part of one assignment, I would teach to the misconception and provide practice for students again and then have a similar problem on the next assignment alongside of new material. The best part about mathematics is that the skills are built on top of each other so having evidence of a learned concept is easy to find.

            We next covered the concept of systems of equations. As a before assessment, I had students identify where lines intersected. Students were successful in this identification therefore we moved on to graphing the systems. This was only a struggle for students who had been gone the day before with an in-depth process of graphing. Jerry was not struggling with the material we were covering so I had him and two similar students work together on an application to real-world situations of systems of equations. With a given scenario and equations, the students had to graph the income of two different salespersons. In the group, the students were able to figure out how sales each salesperson would need to have the same income. The evidence of this learning is from the paper graphs he and the others made.