fractions

Searching for Authentic Assessment in an Online Environment

So here I am again.

I am always inspired by those who find time to write during the school year. I manage to write during the summer and always have the best of intentions for continuing throughout the school year. And then the school year actually begins, and I watch as my best intentions get replaced with mounds of planning and marking.

So here I am again.

 

What a year, or rather, what an ending to the year. I finished the last of my year-end meetings less than one week ago. Usually at this point I am brimming with ideas for planning and writing, but right now I find myself a little bare. Perhaps it is because I am mentally exhausted, but more likely it is because the fall brings uncertainty, and I am not quite sure how to effectively plan for the varied possible teaching environments in our Covid world.

So instead of looking to the future, I will share something from the past. As I think about teaching online these past few months, I know that there were many stages that I went through. It began with survival mode, and then slowly built to a system that was manageable. There were many challenges, and perhaps I will discuss more of those in time, but the one that I would like to focus on today is authentic assessment. Whether assigning numbers, letters, rubrics marks, or comments, at some point we all need to look at student work and give feedback of some sort. My challenge with online learning has been how to determine if the work that I am assessing is truly the work of that student. Our platform was Google Classroom, and I eventually had all students write their assessments while on Zoom, but the form of the assessments varied through trial and error. I had students write answers in Google Docs, I had students write answers in Google Forms, and I had students write answers with paper and pencil and then upload their work to Google Classroom. At some point I would love to talk with those in other schools about what worked for them, but for now I will describe what I think was my most successful assessment.

This past year I taught grade 6 and grade 8 mathematics, as well as grade 7 science. I taught one of the grade 6 mathematics classes and another teacher taught the other two. While teaching online, one of our grade 6 mathematics units covered fractions, decimals, percentages, and order of operations. For the final assessment, we recognized that we needed to come up with something a little different beyond just creating different versions of the questions that had slightly different numbers. We wanted to create a question where it would be a little more obvious if students gave each other the answers. After much thought (and editing), we came up with something similar to this:


Create and simplify an expression. The complexity of your expression and accuracy of your simplification will help to determine your understanding of the concepts. See criteria below to guide you. 

Evidence that you are able to select appropriate mathematics when solving simple problems in familiar situations, apply the selected mathematics successfully when solving these problems, and generally solve these problems correctly:

  • the expression includes both operations (addition/subtraction)
  • the expression includes 2 terms that are being added or subtracted, with at least one of the following: 1 mixed number, 1 proper fraction, 1 improper fraction, AS WELL as 1 decimal number
  • the expression must be correctly simplified at each step
  • where relevant, the final value must be simplified and shown as a mixed number

Evidence that you are able to select appropriate mathematics when solving more complex problems in familiar situations, apply the selected mathematics successfully when solving these problems, and generally solve these problems correctly:

  • the expression includes both operations (addition/subtraction)
  • the expression includes 3 terms that are being added or subtracted, with at least two of the following: 1 mixed number, 1 proper fraction, 1 improper fraction, AS WELL as 1 decimal number
  • there can be no common denominators in the expression
  • each denominator in the expression must be different
  • the expression must be correctly simplified at each step
  • where relevant, the final value must be simplified and shown as a mixed number

Evidence that you are able to select appropriate mathematics when solving challenging problems in familiar and unfamiliar situations, apply the selected mathematics successfully when solving these problems, and generally solve these problems correctly:

  • the expression includes both operations (addition/subtraction)
  • the expression includes 4 or 5 terms that are being added or subtracted, including at least one each of: 1 mixed number, 1 proper fraction, 1 improper fraction, and 1 decimal number
  • there can be no common denominators in the expression
  • each denominator in the expression must be different
  • the expression must be correctly simplified at each step
  • the final value must be able to be simplified
  • the final value must be simplified (and shown as a mixed number, where relevant)

We were fairly pleased with the results. Although we had a second question in the assessment that dealt with percentages, we had students who included percentages in the order of operations question (such as add or subtract 20% of 50). We thought that the student work showed us who understood the concepts from the unit and who was able to thoughtfully choose values that worked well together. I would definitely try to incorporate this “create your own question” strategy into assessments next year, whether in school or online.

Posted by Ilana Cyna in Math

Divide and Conquer

 

I like to find different ways for students to understand the invert and multiply algorithm and this summer I have seen some good ideas for representing division of fractions.

First I will direct you to Graham Fletcher’s blog, GFletchy. Earlier this year he wrote about his method which I like for daily use in the classroom. His strategy is to have students find ways to turn the denominator into one whole.  In his post he also directs you to two other sources for this topic. One source is Fawn Nguyen who wrote about a rectangular model, an interesting model for conceptual understanding. The other source is Christopher Daniel’s blog, Overthinking My Teaching. He discusses a model I had never heard of before, using common numerators to divide fractions.

I also want to share an online widget that I found years ago called the DIM Calculator. This widget allows students to enter any two fractions then follow the instructions to learn why invert and multiply works.

I have used the DIM Calculator in the past, but I will definitely be introducing these other ideas to my students in the future.

Posted by Ilana Cyna in Math, 0 comments

Division of fractions…beyond the algorithm

I am currently working with multiplication and division of fractions with my grade 8 students. I have never been one to have my students just learn a set of rules, and so we always have discussions about the concepts and why the algorithms work. Year after year, the same issues surface. They have no problem conceptualizing multiplication of fractions, but division of fractions is always troublesome. They can follow the algorithm easily enough, but there are always those that have difficulty understanding why it works.

Here are some of my favourite resources for helping my students grasp division of fractions. If you have found others that work, I would love to hear about them.

First up is a neat little widget from Math Design in the Juniverse. I found this several years ago, and have kept it bookmarked ever since. I started using this before I had a Smartboard, and now my students can interact with it, as well.

Next is the division page on the Visual Fractions website. The first page gives one example, but when you click on “Investigate Division” you are taken to a PDF with several pages of examples to use. Although not interactive like the previous site, we can still put this up on my Smartboard and outline parts of the circles in various colours so that students see how many times I can take the pieces of the divisor out of the dividend.

The last resource is a lesson plan from the Ohio Department of Education that I only found recently. It gives several examples to do with students, along with prepared paper manipulatives for use along with the lesson. When I have more time, I intend to check out their vast database for other math lessons and activities.

Happy dividing.
Have a great week.

Posted by admin in Math, 0 comments