1. Assessing Mathematics
Understanding what they understand

2. Assessment
Assessment is the systematic process of gathering information on student learning. – Atlantic Canada Curriculum
Assessment should support the learning of important mathematics and furnish useful information to both teachers and students. – NCTM, 2000

3. Types of Assessment Formative Summative On-going
Information is used to improve student performance and classroom practice
Can be formal or informal
Summative
Typically formal assessment
Used to measure achievement

4. Thinking About Assessment
How do we know students have learned?
What do we value as mathematics learning? Procedural knowledge, recall of facts, application, problem solving?
What assessment approaches allow students to truly demonstrate their learning?

5. Alignment
Our assessment techniques should be aligned with our teaching techniques.
If we teach with a goal of conceptual understanding we must assess for conceptual understanding.
Instructional strategies and assessment strategies should be consistent.

6. Assessment Strategies
Documenting classroom behaviours
Observations of group work, problem solving, communication, etc.
Portfolios and journals
Responding to open-ended questions, monitoring their own learning, reflecting on their learning, sharing and discussing with the teacher
Projects and investigations
Presentations and Reports
Tests, quizzes and assignments

7. Levels of Questions Level 1: Knowledge and Procedures
Remembrance could be simple recall (Examples: Defining a term, recognizing an example, stating a fact, stating a property).
Questions are within one representation (Examples: performing an algorithm, completing a picture)
Reading information from a graph

8. Levels of Questions Level 2: Comprehension of Concepts and Procedures
Makes connections between mathematical representations of single concepts (Examples: Switching representations – drawing a graph from an equation, creating a word problem to fit a graph or equation, etc.)

9. Levels of Questions Level 2: Comprehension of Concepts and Procedures
Making inferences and generalizations, or summarizing (Examples: Extrapolate or interpolate from a graph, find and continue a pattern)
Estimates and predicts
Explanations

10. Levels of Questions Level 3: Problems Solving
Multi-step, multi-concept, multi-task
Non-routine problems
Requires application of problem solving strategies
New and novel applications

11. Break down of questions
Level 1 – 25%
Level 2 – 50%
Level 3 – 25%
This should be an average breakdown for your overall unit assessment plan but does not necessarily apply to each assessment tool.