PACT Assessment Commentary

1. Identify the specific standards/objectives measured by the assessment chosen for analysis. You may just cite the appropriate lesson(s) if you are assessing all of the standards/objectives listed. The standards/objectives measured by this assessment can be categorized into two types: mathematical reasoning/practices, and geometry knowledge. The first group of standards includes important but unspecific mathematical reasoning standards from the California Content Standards including, making decisions about how to approach problems and analyzing problems by identifying relationships This group of standards also includes common core standards of mathematical practices, including making sense of problems and persevering in solving them, reasoning abstractly and quantitatively, looking for and making use of structure, and attending to precision. This assessment, which I gave to the students during Lesson #2, allowed me to assess how well the students were able to achieve these mathematical standards. The assessment also gave the students the opportunity to self-assess their own quality of work. The second group of standards geometry knowledge includes the California content standard (Identify attributes of triangles) and one of the geometry common core standards (Reason with shapes and their attributes). This assessment gave the students the opportunity to use triangles as building blocks to form other figures. This encouraged the students to rotate, flip, and connect the triangles together, building their triangle sense and their ability to identify the triangle attributes. It also required them to think deeply and reason with these triangle attributes. 2. Create a summary of student learning across the whole class relative to your evaluative criteria (or rubric). Summarize the results in narrative and/or graphic form (e.g., table or chart). Attach your rubric or evaluative criteria, and note any changes from what was planned as described in Planning commentary, prompt 6. (You may use the optional chart provided following the Assessment Commentary prompts to provide the evaluative criteria, including descriptions of student performance at different levels.) (TPEs 3, 5) As I analyzed the results from of the assessments of the 22 students that completed this triangle problem project, I noticed that the students fell into one of three main categories. The first category included students that created numerous unique figures through several different strategies. These students found seven unique figures or more, demonstrated an ability to make sense of the triangle problem, reasoned deeply with the triangles and their attributes, and persevered in solving the problem in multiple

ways. These students submitted work that was classified as either very neat or mostly neat. The second category of students were kids that created many figures, but made several duplicates or copies of some of their figures. Some of the figures were copies of other figures that had been flipped or rotated in some way. Because of this, the figures were not all considered unique. This group of students submitted work that was generally classified as either very neat or mostly neat. The third category of students were English langue learning kids or reclassified English language learning kids who had significant misconceptions and/or misinterpretations of the goals, directions, and restrictions of the triangle problem. Even with the visual aid scaffolds and modeling of the activity, these students showed a lack of understanding and submitted work that was either incomplete, or that did not follow the triangle problem guidelines and restrictions outlined on the rubric. Below: This is the rubric that the students used to self-assess themselves during and after the triangle problem project. I also used it to assess the students and gave it back to them with written feedback. I used this rubric and the student work samples as guidance when I filled out the Class Matrix of Student Scores

Triangle Problem Rubric Question A B C D F How many UNIQUE figures 7+ 5-6 3-4 1-2 0 did I find? Was my project neat? Very Mostly Somewhat Messy Blank Neat Neat Neat
Note: The class matrix of student assessment scores is seen on the next page.

TRIANGLE PROBLEM CLASS MATRIX OF STUDENT SCORES Below Basic Basic Proficient Advanced Student reasons with triangles and 0 Students 2 Students 7 Students 13 Students Student makes Student shows Student uses Student uses attributes
Does the student make any reasonable attempts to use the triangles as tools for geometric understanding (i.e. for solving the problem)? no attempt to use the triangles to solve the problem. some effort, but little proof of geometric understanding. triangles to achieve geometric understanding of the problem. triangles to achieve geometric understanding of the problem and offers explanations.

Student makes sense of the problem

Does the student understand the goal of putting 4 triangles together? Does the student understand the restrictions of triangle placement (i.e. short-side to short-side, and hypotenuse to hypotenuse). Does the student understand that similar figures that are rotated and flipped do not count as unique figures?

3 Students
Student uses less than four triangles to make some figures. Duplicates of figures exists. Some triangles touch only at corners or not at all.

0 Students
Student uses four triangles to make figures. Duplicates of figures exist. Some triangles touch only at the corners, or not at all.

12 Students
Student uses four triangles to make figures. All triangles touch at proper places. Some duplicates exist; not all figures are truly unique.

7 Students
Student uses four triangles to make figures. All triangles touch at proper places. All figures are truly unique. No duplicates exist.

Student perseveres in solving the problem

Does the student make 7 or more unique figures? If not, how many unique figures did they make?

0 Students
Student makes 2 figures or less

4 Students
Student makes 2-6 figures, but some figures are duplicates.

10 Students
Student makes 7 or more figures, but some are duplicates.

8 Students
Student makes 7 or more figures, all figures are unique.

Student attends to precision and neatness

Do the completed figures have neatly aligned triangles without cracks between them? Do the completed figures have a moderate amount of glue (enough to keep them stuck to the construction paper, but not so much that it makes a mess)?

0 Students
Project submissions are blank, incomplete, or shredded.

2 Students
Project submissions are ripped, bent, or torn. An excessive amount of glue is used.

9 Students
Parts of figures are glued crookedly. Cracks between triangles are visible and large.

11 Students
Figures are clean, neat, and straight. Paper is unbent. Cracks between triangles are small or invisible.

3. Discuss what most students appear to understand well, and, if relevant, any misunderstandings, confusions, or needs (including a need for greater challenge) that were apparent for some or most students. Cite evidence to support your analysis from the three student work samples you selected. (TPE 3) The students appeared to use the triangles well as mathematical tools and manipulatives. During the lesson and the project, the students were able to reason with the triangles to achieve geometric understanding. The students used these triangle manipulatives to create larger figures, as seen in all of the student work samples. Additionally, most students appeared able to understand and make sense of the problem. Nearly all of the students were able to arrange the triangles together properly without overstepping the triangle placement restrictions. Additionally, most of the students were able to find seven or more figures by arranging the triangles together. Students also showed a relatively satisfying attention to precision and neatness in their projects. When the students discovered a figure that fit in with all of the restrictions, many of them carefully pasted it down onto the construction paper, paying careful attention to precision so that the sides of the triangles would all line up. Most of the students who paid slightly less attention to precision and neatness were still able to submit figures that were neat enough to assess and comprehend. A good example of a student who made sense of the problem, reasoned with the triangles and their attributes well, and showed acceptable attention to precision and neatness is Student #1 (see student work samples). This student created eight unique figures, showed relative neatness and attention to detail, and used the triangles to create figures of larger shapes or objects that he recognized. This student sample is a good representation of the work submitted by 8 students, who scored advanced on all sections of the matrix. The largest misunderstanding by far that the students had related to the instruction of creating unique figures. Many of the students created and submitted figures that were copies of other figures in their collection. The students likely did not understand the idea of similarity where two identical figures can be rotated or flipped to make them look different. Although the idea of uniqueness was briefly introduced, I should have spent more time going over the ideas of similar figures and unique figures with the class to avoid these misconceptions. A good example of student work that shows this misconception can be seen in Student Sample #2 (see student work samples). This student created eight figures by piecing the triangles together within the restrictions of the activity. However, Figure #1 and Figure #2 are copies of each other, and thus only count as one unique figure. Similarly, Figure #6, Figure #7, and Figure #8 are also all copies of each other. The similarity in these three figures is more difficult to recognize because the figures have been flipped and rotated in such a way that they look like completely different figures.

Many students made this mistake several time in their project, and thus ended up created fewer unique figures than they thought. There is a small group of students that clearly have much greater misconceptions and needs. This last group of students includes an English language learner, and two redesignated English language learners. Examples of misconceptions that these students made can be seen in all five figures in Student Sample #3. In these example, the student makes several errors, including putting triangle hypotenuses together with triangle short sides (Figure # 1 and Figure #4), placing triangles together by the corners (Figure #2 and Figure #3), having copies of figures (Figures #2 and #3), and having large cracks in between the triangles (Figure #5). Clearly, there was a misconception in the directions and the guidelines with these few students, because they failed to create neat figures that fit in with the project restrictions. 4. From the three students whose work samples were selected, choose two students, at least one of which is an English Learner. For these two students, describe their prior knowledge of the content and their individual learning strengths and challenges (e.g., academic development, language proficiency, special needs). What did you conclude about their learning during the learning segment? Cite specific evidence from the work samples and from other classroom assessments relevant to the same evaluative criteria (or rubric). (TPE 3) For this prompt, I will focus on Student #1 (a native English speaking G.A.T.E. student), and student #3 (a non-G.A.T.E. English language learner). Both of these students had at least some prior knowledge with geometry and triangles earlier in the school year. According to the lesson plans that my Cooperating Teacher showed me, the students had been briefly exposed to triangle types, but had never used triangles as manipulatives to solve pieces of a puzzle. Student #1 has many academic strengths. These include a strong understanding and enthusiasm for math concepts (he is the most advanced student in the class in the Learning Upgrade computerized mathematics curriculum program), and he is also constantly looking for ways to academically challenge himself. He also excels in language development. He consistently receives perfect scores on vocabulary quizzes, and uses advanced-leveled vocabulary in his speech and writing. Most importantly for this learning sequence, he is familiar with thinking critically and creatively to solve problems. As a certified G.A.T.E. student, he has been given abstract puzzles, selfreflection assessments, and creative thinking exercises all year long. He feels very comfortable doing the kind of critical and creative thinking necessary to complete an activity such as solving the triangle problem. Student #1s most glaring need is to be challenged to keep him from becoming bored and dissatisfied with school. Student #3 also has academic strengths, including ones in math. She constantly scores above-average on computational assessments, such as multiplication or division worksheets and flashcards. While she is an English language learner, she has a strong memory, and can recite poems and shorts stories in Spanish.

However, Student #3 struggles with some activities that test her English development. She does not perform well in reading comprehension assessments, writing exercises, or math word problems. She often struggles with activities that required deep, complex, and creative thinking, and can become frustrated when problems do not have a fixed, definite answer. In addition to these challenges, this student has shown signs of being dyslexic. This condition also further complicates her ability to read, write, spell, and follow directions that are written down. For student #1, I have concluded that this type of learning activity suits his style of thinking, learning, and comprehending very well because it tailors towards G.A.T.E. styles of learning. Because this student is G.A.T.E. certified, he thrives in the environment where problems have multiple answers, require complex thinking, and offer opportunities for self-reflection. This student showed that could find many unique figures in the triangle problem, showing his strong ability to solve problems with multiple answers. This student was also able to explain through writing how he found unique figures in multiple ways. (One strategy that he used was joining two triangles to make a square at the core of his figures, and adding other triangles onto the outsides, as seen in Figures #5 and #7. Another strategy that he used was connecting his triangles together to create other shapes that he recognized, as seen in Figures #3 and #8.) For student #3, I have concluded that the student needed much more assistance and different scaffolds to successfully understand the main ideas and requirements in the project. From what I know about the students background, the student should have had more modeling, perhaps on an individual level. The student probably would have benefited from scaffolds that tailored towards auditory and kinesthetic learners in addition to visual learners. I could have had this student write down the instructions in order to awaken the kinesthetic part of her learning style, as the act of writing down information often helps students absorb and comprehend it better than simply listening to it or reading it. 5) What oral and/or written feedback was provided to individual students and/or the group as a whole (refer the reviewer to any feedback written directly on submitted student work samples)? How and why do your approaches to feedback support students further learning? In what ways does your feedback address individual students needs and learning goals? Cite specific examples of oral or written feedback, and reference the three student work samples to support your explanation. Writing feedback for the Advanced group of students consisted of lots of praise for neatness, completion, and use of different strategies. This group of students completed all parts of the project at a high level, and I acknowledged that accomplishment in the written feedback. However, I believe that it is important to continue challenging high achieving students to challenge themselves. In this particular case, I wrote to these students that although they found the required 7 figures, none of them found all 13 of them on their own. I reminded this group of students of the importance and the benefits of going above and beyond what is expected of them.

This type of feedback supports this group of students further learning because it warns them to avoid becoming complacent and encourages them to challenge themselves and assess their own academic potential. This is one of the reasons that the self-reflection aspect of the activity was so important. If the students begin to identify themselves as students and individuals who go above and beyond in math, this will carry over to other school subjects and non-academic aspects of their lives. Writing feedback to the Proficient group of students who made the mistakes of creating and submitting duplicates of their figures allowed me to give more constructive feedback. I first pointed out to these students that, because of the duplicate figures, they had submitted fewer unique figures than they had probably thought. In the feedback, I reminded these students that problems that deal with complex and creative thinking often have hidden challenges. In this case, the complex problem hid the fact that unique figures are more specific and more difficult to create than any figures. I also provided feedback that stressed the importance of double checking their work with a peer before submitting it to be evaluated. Peer review and peer feedback is extremely important for any project or work, and it is an important skill that transcends mathematics problems that students should learn. I also gave feedback (both positive and negative) to the students in this Proficient group that had varying degrees of attention to precision and neatness. For the students had had large gaps or cracks in their figures, I explained the importance of creating precisely laid out figures, and gave them a few strategies that were effective in helping them do so (like lining up the figures with the edge of the paper and using only a limited amount of glue). This feedback supports this student groups further learning because it identifies the groups largest weaknesses (duplicate figures, lack of attention to precision) and gives them strategies to avoid making similar mistakes in the future. These strategies include searching for hidden challenges, reviewing work with peers, and attending to precision by using the naturally straight line of the paper as an edge to make neat work. The feedback that I gave to the lowest achieving group was the most extensive and the most personal, because it was directed at the fewest number of students, and it was directed towards students with individual needs and learning goals. The feedback began with a brief summary of the misconceptions that the students seemed to have, including the placement of the triangles, the number of figures required, and the academic language misunderstandings (short side vs. hypotenuse) that the students assessments highlighted. The next set of feedback encouraged the students to find resources (teacher, peer, etc) that could help them answer questions and clear up confusions that they had. This is important for any set of struggling students because resources are necessary to overcoming many academic struggles. I ended the feedback with an invitation redo the project with added support and guidance. (More detail about these next steps is outlined below in Part 6.) This feedback supports this student groups further learning because it addresses many of the large misconceptions, and it sets goals for fixing them.

6) Based on the student performance on this assessment, describe the next steps for instruction for your students. If different, describe any individualized next steps for the two students whose individual learning you analyzed. These next steps may include a specific instructional activity or other forms of re-teaching to support or extend continued learning of objectives, standards, central focus, and/or relevant academic language for the learning segment. In your description, be sure to explain how these next steps follow from your analysis of the student performances. (TPEs 2, 3, 4, 13) Based on the student performances on this assessment, the most important set of next steps needs to re-introduce the students to the ideas of similarity and uniqueness. Since so many students submitted duplicate figures (which were rotated or flipped) and incorrectly claimed that each of the their figures was unique, the logical next step would be to design an activity that allows students to explore how figures can be rotated, flipped, or otherwise adjusted while remaining similar to other figures. This new lesson/activity would involve a number of opportunities for academic language development, including the new vocabulary words unique and similar. Additionally, the students could have the opportunity to use manipulatives, which would appeal to the kinesthetic/tactile learners in the class. Because so many students made these duplicate mistakes, it would probably be worth teaching this lesson about geometric uniqueness and similarity to the entire class, and not just one specific group. For the group of students that demonstrated several severe misconceptions about the assessment (partially due to their states as English language learners), I will need to have them redo the triangle problem with certain adjustments that will make them more successful on their second attempt. Since this group had such a small number of students, I will not devote an entire whole-class lesson to this subject because it would benefit too few students and would essentially re-teach a majority of the students an academic lesson that they have already mastered. Instead, I will find a time when students are completing independent math work, and pull these students aside. In designing the second triangle problem for these students who did not understand it the first time, I will have to take more drastic next steps to ensure that the students become familiar with the main ideas and key concepts of the lesson. These steps could involve a simpler version of the triangle problem (with only two or three triangles used to make figures), use of grid paper as a scaffold to help keep the project neater (for visual learners), and additional modeling (with a requirement that the students in the group model the activity back, similar to echo talk). One of the first ways that I could re-teach these students the concept of the triangle problem is to model the activity, and then have them model and explain the activity back to each other in pairs. This method would be especially beneficial for the auditory learners, because they would hear the activity modeled several times before having a chance to complete the project. Additionally, the small group format and the repeated modeling would allow these students more time to comprehend the process requirements and restrictions, and to ask questions. One of the ways that I could help the students make their projects neater and assist them in their attending to precision is to use grid paper instead of construction

paper. Use of the grid paper would provide the students with straight edges to line up their triangles, which would likely reduce the cracks in between the triangles within the figures. This scaffold would likely benefit the visual learners because it would allow these students to more clearly see the attributes of triangles and find ways of attaching them together. One drastic step that I could take to simplify the problem without diminishing the deep thinking or self reflection aspects of the problem is to reduce the number of triangles needed to create figures. If I were to reduce the number of triangles from four to two or three, the triangle problem would become much simpler, and students would not feel so overwhelmed or unable to solve the problem. This simplification of the problem would still allow students to become familiar of many of the mathematical tasks mandated by the standards, including reasoning with triangles and their attributes and attending to precision, but it would reduce the complexities of these standards to a level that the students could handle. Because this group of students has difficulty with language, I would also need a scaffold that would transcend the language barrier to help them achieve understanding of the problem and the concepts behind it. I could do this by modeling one possible solution to the triangle problem, and have the students follow along in the modeling with their own triangle manipulatives. This modeling/copying activity would guide the students through the tricky beginning parts of the lesson, and would set them up to use their own understanding and creativity to find the other solutions.