Third Assessment
In order to prepare for the third assessment, which was a quiz on sections 3-1 to 3-2 in their textbook, I developed another study guide. This study guide was different from the previous two because it contained a variety of different types of questions and example problems. The study guide contained eleven questions with multiple parts. In the study guide, I asked students to define important vocabulary terms, reference their textbook to review important information (I provided page numbers) and to answer example problems. I gave students this study guide the day before the quiz. Students were given the entire class period (about 42 minutes) to work on this study guide. I first had students work individually for 20 minutes and then with a partner for the rest of the class period. While students were working, I went around the room answering questions and helping students if they had difficulty. I told students that I would collect the study guide the next day before the quiz and it would be counted as a homework assignment.
The quiz contained 9 questions, some with multiple parts, and students were given 30 minutes to answer all the questions. On the study guide, I had asked students to define a few vocabulary words, including "discontinuous function" and "asymptote". The study guide also told students in number 2 to "review all of the parent functions (their equations and their graphs) on page 162 of the textbook". On the quiz, I asked students in question 5a to "Give an equation of a parent function that is discontinuous" and in question 5b to "Give an equation of a parent function that has an asymptote". I thought that these two questions were important to look at on the quiz because it showed if students understood the definitions and if they had reviewed the parent functions in their textbook. I was very pleased to see that "Oscar" and "Evan" answered both of these questions correctly and received full credit for their answers.
Next, I looked at questions 10 and 11 on the study guide. These two questions asked students to make calculations as well as to draw conclusions. When looking at "Oscar’s" study guide, he answered both questions correctly. Therefore, I was very happy when I saw that he answered a similar question on the quiz (number 6) correctly. However, when looking at "Evan’s" study guide, he only did the calculations, but failed to answer the conclusion questions, which is the most important part. Then when I looked at question 6 on the quiz, I saw that he had incorrectly answered two of the five parts to that question. I think that if he had answered the conclusion questions on the study guide, he may have avoided these mistakes on the quiz.
When looking at their overall grades, "Oscar" received a 43/50, which I was very pleased about. "Evan" unfortunately received a 34/50. After grading their quizzes and seeing the grades that the two students earned, I went back to take another look at the study guides. "Oscar" had answered every question on the study guide and had answered almost all of the questions correctly. "Evan" on the other hand did not attempt several questions on the study guide (about 25% he left blank). This did not surprise me when I saw that these were the types of questions he got wrong on the quiz. I had hoped that he would have made better use of the study guide to help him prepare for the assessment.