Erin Miller
October 7, 2002

Math Assessment Part 1

 When I observed my two students during math class, they were very interested and their actions were consistent with the interviews. I noticed that most of the children in my grade level group had similar answers to certain questions. Most children said that they like math and that it is fun. Some said it makes you smart. A lot of them mentioned that they liked playing with blocks and building things. Some kids mentioned counting and mentioned specific landmark numbers such as 10, 100, and 500. Almost all of the children responded the same to question number 10, which was: If you’re having a problem in school with math, what do you do? They answered that they would raise their hand and/or ask the teacher for help. Most kids like games which is consistent with the first grade developmental issues, specifically intellectual development. Intellectual development for first grade says that first graders have an interest in schoolwork and see it as a sort of playtime. They do learn best through discovery, as we all found out and that is also consistent with developmental issues.

Erin Miller
October 7, 2002

Math Assessment Reflection Part 1

 For part one of the math assessment, I learned that it is not easy to assess just by interviewing a student. At least, I don’t think it is. I don’t think I did a very good job with asking the questions. I don’t think I asked them very well. I wish I could’ve gotten more information from the students. It seems like everyone else in my grade level group got more out of the kids. I was surprised at how much my kids didn’t talk to me about. I feel like I have a lot to learn about assessment, what works for each student, and I need to know how to assess different students. For example, if the interview just isn’t working for one student, I feel like I need to know a different way to assess that student. Assessment is a very hard thing to do and I hope I learn more when I get into student teaching. It is also hard to do a general math assessment because math really consists of so many things. Lumping it all into a general category makes it hard to understand what the students really know.