Just keep trying

I have attempted three different versions of my assessments. None have which have met my needs or my students. I am sure that there is someone out there that is more efficient at this process. Currently, my assessments have been very personal for my own classroom. I want to work on making it a tool that would be more accessible to a bigger audience. I selected my questions from Pearson's Digits. My students have taken their assessments online. The last assessment I gave was on Percents. This is a huge concept for 7th graders and surprisingly difficult for them to conceptualize.

I began my unit with bar models. I really liked using bar models but was unsure of how long I should spend working on them. Some of my students still refer to them, but not as often as I would like. I think that they saw the bar models as a "thing" and once I moved on to the percent equation, they didn't need to use that "thing" anymore. I attempted to use the percent equation instead of the percent proportion. In the 25 years that I have been teaching, I continue to switch back and forth between the two methods. I guess that I should have just taught both, but that sometimes is confusing. My students that are grade-level and higher do just fine with the equation and recognizing when to move the decimal, but my low kids really struggle with this. I wish that I would have used the percent proportion with them...but then I have the question of how do I want them to solve the proportion. Do I really want to teach "cross multiply & divide"?

Here is a copy of the first 5 questions and the "work" paper that I gave to my students. I also made an Educreations video for remediation on this topic. (Percent Video Tutorial) My biggest challenge is how to find the time to have the students watch the video and get the remediation that they need. I also need to remake this video for a better quality and probing questions for the students to think about. I keep trying....On to Integers!!

mFa Math 7 Formative Assessments

My Math for America project is to create formative assessments for the 7th Grade Common Core Math. My plan is to create pre and post assessment that will help drive instruction. I also want to provide students with formative, constructive feedback that will help them to know what they know.

This project is proving to be much more challenging for me to create the type of assessments that will generate good information for me and my students. I can't always make a very good decision about the questions. I am not sure that my rubric is helping students.