Markert-Student Work Blog

Abby Markert

Student Work Blog 3

This week for my student work I was able to look at the most recent assessment of unit 1. In this assessment students were asked to complete 6 questions, some with numerous parts. This assessment consisted of two parts. Part A of the assessment included: counting by 1’s, writing numbers that come before and after, tally marks, and writing their numbers one through 6. Part B of the assessment asked the students questions relating to: counting by 2’s, counting by 5’s and recognizing the winner of Top-It. The first grade team decided to weigh part A out of 14 points and part B out of 5. This is because part A included areas that the students should know from kindergarten and also more questions. The student that I am looking at scored an 8/14 in part A and a 4/5 in part B. The big area of confusion that this student demonstrated was in the second question that asked the student to write the number that comes before and after. In both of the examples (before and after 4 and before and after 9) the student got the two numbers correct but put them in different positions. For example he wrote 10,9,8. This shows me that he recognizing the two numbers that surround the 4 but he either does not realize which on is greater or was unclear on the instructions. Above this question he was able to correctly count by 1’s starting at 8 all the way to 15. But it was interesting that when he had to do the “-9-“ he did it backwards when above he was able to do it correctly. The next set of questions involves tally marks. I found it interesting that in the tally marks for “12” he accurately wrote the tallies including “slashing it.” However he wrote twelve in tallies by doing a bundle of five then there were two tallies then another bundle of five. This is interesting thinking because he would need to do the two bundles of five before he realizes there are two more tallies. I am not sure if he just decided to squish those two in the middle or if he thinks that’s where the two belong. The way it is written suggests he wrote five tallies then he wrote two and continued to write five more. Judging by the other work that I have seen from this student I believe he wrote five and then the second 5 and just squeezed in the two other tallies in between.

Since this assessment is given out of the Everyday Math curriculum it makes it challenging to see what the students are really thinking. I would have liked to ask him why he placed the numbers in the order that he did or why did he write the tallies the way he did? This would be extremely informative since the answers are all correct they are just written in a different way. The questions on this assessment are all questions that he has seen before and they are a way to see what the students learned from the unit. However, in this particular case I would find it useful to hear what he is thinking to be able to understand any misconceptions he may be having.