Sandra’s Maths Literacy Class

The focus of a project that I have given my learners was on Learning Outcome 4: The project will be posted to the projects category. 

The learner is able to collect, summarise, display and analyse data and to apply knowledge of statistics and probability to communicate, justify, predict and critically interrogate findings and draw conclusions.

The maths lit guys and girls had three periods (+/- one and a half hour) to do research on the web. I  explained the project and what was expected from them. The criteria was adapted from the assessment standards.

All of them delivered a wonderful PowerPoint presentation. ( I will load these presentations). Most of them however did not manage to provide evidence that they have achieved the individual assessment standards competently.  They would comment on the graphs but seldom provided comparative ideas. Some of the kids did give their personal opinion but then couldn’t use the data and related graphs to justify their opinion.

In some cases I got the impression that the kids engaged far to emotionally with the issues they have chosen.

I have experienced that they can be objective when they had to assess their peers in a group. They only assessed on knowledge level. The self assessment using the checklist had no meaning. The criteria and marks allocated did not give the kids an idea what they should be looking for.

I have since learnt the following (attended an accredited assessment course):

• The assessment criteria that are used on a check list must be written to measure competence against specific assessment standards.
• Thinking about the assessment standards again I realised that there is also progression according to the levels of the Maths Literacy assessment taxonomy.
• Peer assessment and Group assessment must be used as opportunities for the Maths Lit kids to learn from their own and their peers mistakes. These mistakes would then be corrected and better and more refined projects will be handed in.
• I think the most important thing that I learned is that the verb in the assessment standard guides the criteria.

When I evaluated the results of the learners I thought that  these kids might not be mature enough to seperate themselve from the issue they are investigated.  I am prepared to erase those thoughts from my mind. The reason I am saying this is that the kids most probably did not exactly what to do as the criteria was far to vague. I am considering redesigning the assessment tools and give them an opportunity to hand it as a project for their grade 12 portfolio. It would be great if you could comment on this. 

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