Monitoring Student Progress
Whenever you listen and provide feedback to student explanations of their problem-solving strategy, you're monitoring the progress of their learning. Such assessments:
- Determine whether or not your students are progressing adequately toward achieving the content standards of the unit of study.
- Answer the questions:
- Do I need to adjust how/what I am teaching?
- Do students need re-teaching?
- Are they progressing adequately?
- To what degree are my students achieving the content standards I am teaching?
One way to assess students' explanations is to utilize a rubric. The rubric could be used only by the teacher as a quick way to identify verbal feedback OR it could be scored and given to students as a more formal assessment of their explanation. The specific use of the rubric needs to serve the purpose and circumstance of the lesson.
Here's a rubric that Ms. Barney could use to assess the quality of student explanations. This could be printed with multiple copies on a page, then cut up, and a teacher could quickly highlight the quality indicators and give it to students. Highlighting indicators would allow the teacher to select criteria from different levels (i.e., a student might have an explanation that "demonstrates strong understanding of concept" yet it may also be "nearly complete but some gaps exist.")
Rubric for Student Explanation |
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4 |
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3 |
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2 |
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1 |
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0 |
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With practice, students will become more adept at explaning their mathematical thinking. And, they'll be able to use these skills in small groups as well as whole-class discussion!
- Try it yourself! Below are Word and pdf versions (4 rubrics to a page):
- Rubric for Student Explanation (41 KB PDF)
- Rubric for Student Explanation (48 KB Word)
Review the explanation given by the second student and apply the above rubric.