Middle Years Math

 Have you heard of triangulation of data?  Triangulation of data involves collecting evidence from multiple sources over time. When you hear triangulation, if you think of a triangle, you are bang on! Essentially, as math teachers, we need to collect data that extends beyond student products.  We will only be able to truly assess our students' understanding if we go beyond the typical pencil to paper tests, quizzes, assignments...etc. that we are used to seeing in math classes.  First let's look at the 3 components of assessment here.  I believe that we are all familiar with the idea of products: this is anything that a student produces (quiz, test, assignment, homework...etc.)  all too often, students' understanding is assessed solely on their production.  We need to go a little further to evaluate their understanding. This leads us to conversations: Conversations imply exactly what you think, talking to students or rather, students talking to you....

I cannot claim that this was my idea.  I heard about it at a Workshop I attended years ago and I have been using this daily in my math classes ever since!  This is a quick way to a)do a quick check-in with all of your students, b) correct any common mistakes that might pop up and c) celebrate your students' math thinking even though they may not get the correct answer.  The activity is truly simple:  Give each student a problem to solve.  That's it!  The cool part is what happens once you've collected the answers.   I used to have students complete the problem on sticky notes (and you still could) but I now prefer to use an app like Whiteboard.fi .   As responses come in, I sort them into two categories: yes & no. The "yes" students clearly understood the problem and were able to show what they know.  (I quickly check them off in my notebook as having understood the problem).  The magic comes from the "no" pile.  I cho...