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Effective assessment is integral to successful mathematics instruction.
- Small group situations provide an opportunity to get an accurate overview of how the different students are engaging with Mathematics.
- The session provides an opportunity for the teacher to hear how students are solving problems and discuss what strategies they are using. Some teachers may take notes (formative assessment) and use this information for further teaching decisions.
- Information gained from observations of students during these lessons provides valuable material for planning future instruction. These observations can be recorded in the modelling book or, preferably, in iUgo under 'Next Steps' (as seen below).
Organising Classroom Programmes Assessment Information
Organising Classroom Programmes Assessment Information
There are three clear steps to organising your information:
- Analysis of knowledge hot spots
- Assigning strategy stages to students
- Grouping for instruction.
Analysis of Hot Spots
Analysis of Hot Spots
Examining students’ number knowledge data will highlight areas of strength and weakness for individual students. From this data, you will be able to identify “hot spots”. These hot spots are problematic areas of knowledge that are common to many students in your class and can be addressed in the whole-class knowledge teaching at the warm-up phase of each lesson. Other knowledge gaps are specific to students in certain strategy stage transitions. Choose suitable knowledge learning activities (from Book 4: Teaching Number Knowledge) to target the knowledge needs of your students during your warm-up or group teaching time. It is quite common to see a mismatch between a student’s strategy stage and their knowledge. This suggests that either the student has more knowledge than they are able to use or that the student has powerful strategies but lacks the knowledge to apply them to more difficult numbers. This is why the identification of knowledge hot spots is crucial for quality teaching.
Assigning a Strategy Stage
Assigning a Strategy Stage
Your initial grouping of students should be by their dominant strategy stage. Be mindful that students’ strategy stages across the three domains (Addition and Subtraction; Multiplication and Division; Ratios and Proportions) may be out of phase. For example, a student might be at stage 5 for both the addition and subtraction and the proportions and ratios domains and at stage 6 for multiplication and division. This student understands how to derive multiplication facts but lacks the addition and subtraction strategies to do so efficiently and has insufficient knowledge to apply multiplicative thinking to fractions. Your initial focus is likely to be on addition and subtraction, so assign the student to their stage for that domain. (This is common where students have learnt times tables by rote.) Later regrouping for multiplication and division or fractions will need to take into account formative assessment information about the students’ progress and knowledge of their characteristics as well as the initial GloSS results. Assign strategy stage 8 (Advanced Proportional) to students who have reached stage 6 for addition and subtraction and stage 7 for multiplication and division and who have also demonstrated high-level strategies for solving problems with fractions, ratios, and proportions.
Grouping for Instruction
Grouping for Instruction
For information on grouping, see here.
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