Assessment for Learning

This post describes a few assessment strategies several colleagues and I piloted with a group of middle school students. One of our main goals was to provide students an opportunity to learn through the assessment process, to revise their initial work, and to make generalizations that reach beyond the boundaries of a given task. The impetus for this work stems from the Mathematics Assessment Project and their emphasis on students' use of mathematical practices throughout task completion.

The Task

MAP Task Security Camera found at http://map.mathshell.org/materials/tasks.php?taskid=273&subpage=expert.

ActivePrompt

When students reached question 3, we turned to ActivePrompt to collect realtime responses from students and share those responses with the class. We found that students were engaged with this portion of the task from the outset primarily because they were given a chance to use their intuition and make a guess.

Give this link to your students: http://activeprompt.herokuapp.com/SPPFK
Go here to see their responses: http://activeprompt.herokuapp.com/TQPJB

GeoGebra

Teams explored the task further using the following GeoGebra exploration tool.

Many thanks to the teachers who were willing to pilot some new assessment practices. Our debrief surfaced several key questions that will help to guide our future implementation:

• How well do students adapt based on responses from peers?
  
• How do students learn to become better "guessers" while developing a greater trust in their own intuition?
  
• How can the right tools enhance the assessment process?