1/26/07

Yesterday we gave the Stretching and Shrinking post-test. It was a huge success! The 45 students on our team scored only A's, B's, and C's. Most of our students got A's and B's. There were only six C's across the board. Yvette and I are thrilled by the results. The most exciting news is that Michael, the one I have been writing about so much, scored a C on his test - 75 percent! This is a huge accomplishment for him. From what he's told me, I don't think he ever scored as high as a C on a math test before.

One of the ways that we are assessing the whole seventh grade's progress over the year is by analyzing the results of our pre-tests and post-tests for each book. For this grade level, we sat down and created an assessment for each of the five books that we teach. We then give this test twice -- as a pre-test and as a post-test. Last year we all gave the same post-tests, but they didn't give us as much information about student progress. That's because we didn't have anything to compare the results with. This year we can compare pre-test results with post-test results.

This is the first post-test of the year for which all three teams gave the pre-test. I'm interested to see how our information compares with the other teams' information. I'm also very interested in seeing how the post-test scores of our IEP, LEP, and Hispanic students have changed since the pre-test. I wonder whether one group has achieved more than the others. In our school improvement plan, the school identified these three groups as less likely to "meet" on the ISAT.

Right now my class is working on the project explained on pages 94 and 95 of Stretching and Shrinking. In this project, students take a piece of art (clip art) and create an image with it. They must either stretch or shrink the figure, based on a scale factor of their choice. Our students this year really love to draw, so this project is perfect for them! As of today, my students have chosen a clip art picture and traced it onto grid paper. Now they're beginning to stretch or shrink their pictures. The only limitations are that if they're stretching the image, they must use a scale factor over 4; and if they're shrinking the image, they must not shrink it to less than ¼ of its original size. This project is easier for my students to complete and understand than the Filling and Wrapping project was. I felt that the latter was a great project, but it seemed to be overwhelming to many students.

Yvette and I are beginning to plan for our next book, Comparing and Scaling. We're going to give our students two pre-tests. One pre-test will also be the post-test. The other pre-test will assess whether the students have the necessary background knowledge to successfully complete this book.