I really enjoyed creating these “POWs” or “Problems of the Week” for my students. The questions are fun, engaging, contain real mathematics, and force students to step outside the standard math paradigm. Furthermore, reading their work is interesting and rewarding and gives me a really good look at how they are thinking about mathematics. These POWs are considered summative assessments because they require students to apply their knowledge of the content area, but also to reflect on how they are applying their knowledge, and more importantly, to discuss their thinking and any mathematical abilities and techniques that they had to apply to come to solutions. Therefore, I think that these POWs are an excellent way to assess not just math content knowledge in my students, but a lot of the skills that surround being a successful mathematician and student. Now, actually getting my students to apply themselves in these assignments (I have done three this year with my core math classes, and am about to introduce the fifth to my Pre-Calculus students) has been difficult. It is so hard to get students to think outside the box in the math classroom, where they have all been trained to answer question, get grade, that the first attempt at the POWs was rough. Many students did not understand the requirements (even though they were discussed at length in class), and so only attempted to answer the mathematical question, and ignored the other requirements of the assignment. Most of these students failed the first assignment. However, they have all understood by now that although the math is rigorous, and the solution important to arrive at, that is only half the picture. The other main piece of the assessment is analyzing how students are able to reflect on their own problem-solving process. At the end of the day, I am a math teacher, but what I am actually teaching my students to do is problem-solve, collaborate, and persevere. Therefore, in spite of the frustrations of getting my students to step outside the standard math-class paradigm, I think this form of summative assessment is really successful in its purpose: analyzing students’ abilities to problem-solve. Moving forward, I am excited to continue to use POWs with my students, to assess knowledge from the unit, and to assess the other, less tangible skills of perseverance, collaboration, and problem-solving. However, I started this year off with a very amorphous, poorly structured POW, and in future years I would not do so. I think I did not scaffold this type of thinking as well as I had hoped with my students this year. Next year I would start with easy and obviously relevant problems in order to help students see the importance of the tangential mathematician’s skills. In addition to this, I would start off my year with more practice for my students in group work and collaboration, and simple puzzling and meta-cognition in order to scaffold them up for greater success at these difficult, self-analytical summative assessments.
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Julian SpringerMath Department - Animas High School Archives
December 2019
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