Let’s Analyze

Welcome Back!  As promised I thought that we could take a look at an item or two together to determine if the questions I proposed were appropriate or if you might have wanted to add a few of your own.

Let’s look at an item I chose, which we will be working with for the rest of this series of questions and multiple posts.

What I would like you to do is first identify the key (correct response to the item).  What did you get?   Awesome!! We’ll revisit your response in a moment.

Coming back to the original series of question, the first one was, “How do you analyze interim or diagnostic assessment data?”

Let’s say this is one of the items on the assessment.  First we need to ground ourselves in the content.

How might you answer the following questions?

• What is being assessed? How do you know?
• Can you identify the grade?
• Is this a conceptual or a procedural item? How do you know?
• How else might you be able to describe this item in your PLC/PLN?

If you answered Grade 5 Number and Operations – Fractions, apply and extend previous understandings of multiplication to multiply a fraction or whole number by a fraction, then you were correct! This is in fact 5.NF.B.4.  In case you are wondering, the above item and others similar to it can be found at Smarter Balanced Item Specifications.

Now, take a moment and reflect on all of the options to the question.  What does each of the distractors tell you about student conceptions and unfinished learning?

• Distractor A: The student thought that the expression represented 2/3 of each of 3 wholes. There is no inclusion of the 4 in this distractor.
• Distractor B: The student was able to identify that there are 3 wholes, with each whole divided into 4ths, and each of the wholes shaded with 2 equal portions.
• Distractor C: The student was able to identified that the 4 was how many wholes were needed and that each whole was divided equally into thirds, and shaded 2 1/3’s of each whole.
• Distractor D: The student identified that the 4 was how many wholes were needed, but ignored that each one was divided into 3rds and divided into halves instead.

Would you describe the options in different way?  Please share you thoughts or ideas so we can all learn reflect together!

I’m sure by now you have figured out that the correct response is C.  The student was able to correctly identify that there 4 copies of a whole that is shaded by 2/3. Can you see it?

• What questions do you still have?
• What observations have you made?
• If you had a class of 31 students and the breakdown of the number or responses by distractor was as follows, what 3 questions come to mind?
  • A – 3
  • B – 5
  • C – 12
  • D – 11

Next, we will be taking a look at the second question in the series, “How do you use this information formatively?” 

Until next time!!!