My assessments of students’ comprehension took place primarily through one on one conversations with students and their completion of written worksheets. During each lesson, I used confidence checks (thumbs up, thumbs down, thumbs sideways) to determine which students needed the most support during independent and partner work time. The worksheets used during this unit were always dictated aloud for all students to ensure that I was assessing their math skills
As students completed their worksheets, I was able to ask them about their work and used this information to inform my next steps. For example, during lesson three, I noticed that students were confused about the key. Many students were consistently using 2 as the value of the each symbol on a picture graph – even when the key indicated that the value was a completely different number. After asking my students to explain how they got their answer, I learned that I had provided several examples with two as the value of each symbol. In my attempt to keep the value of each symbol a small number so that it was more accessible to the varying levels of number sense in the class, I had accidently mislead my students. My informal assessment allowed me to quickly identify my error and correct it during my fourth lesson.
My final assessment of the unit was the creation of a graph using manipulatives. For this assessment, students were provided with a velvro/dry erase graphing mat, an ice cream symbol mat with removable relcro symbols, a dry erase marker, and an eraser. On the mat, students recorded the number of chocolate and vanilla ice cream cones in dry erase marker as well as the value of each ice cream symbol. The values of these numbers were differentiated by group. Students then graphed the data using the velcro symbols. If a student was making a mistake, I would ask them to explain what the numbers I had given them meant.