Carrie Kramer

April 27, 2014

Pupil Assessment Analysis
3 of the 4 of my pupil assessments were done with 3rd grade students at Glen Allen
Elementary. The last one was done with a 4th grader who attends Shady Grove Elementary
School. Upon completion of the interviews I was able to divide the 4 students into 2 groups
based on mathematical understanding and number sense.
Olivia and Tom had similar understandings of math although Toms understanding was a
little deeper than Olivia. Olivia had the basic division facts while Tom had basic multiplication
facts. Olivias understanding of division was the idea that division is facts that are memorized.
She was not able to link any mathematical connections to division, which is surprising because
her test scores on division and multiplication are very high. Tom was able to solve multiplication
in numerous ways including pictures. He was unable to connect it to the real world by himself,
but he was able to write a story problem that made mathematical sense. Both Olivia and Tom
seemed to struggle with problem solving skills and making connections. I was unable to break
through to Olivia until the end of the test in which she began to realize that division was
similar to fractions, however she was still unable to show this understanding with her story
problem. Tom was a little better with communicating his ideas and representing the problems in
different ways while Olivia was quiet through the whole interview and couldnt represent
division other than fact recollection.
Alex and Henry completed the algebraic thinking assessment. Alex thoroughly surprised
me with the composition and decomposition of numbers. Henry on the other hand did very well
with the assessment and showed moderate number sense skills, however he seemed to have
stronger recall skills. He also lacked a thorough discussion of his answers. He seemed to think
that things had the answers they did just because. Alex seemed to think through the problems
with a little more depth, his explanations werent as clear but I felt like the understanding was
deeper. Both students showed strong evidence of most of the 5 process standards. They were
able to cognitively think about the problems presented, reason through the answers and for the
most part prove their answers. However the assessment did not include any connections that
could have been made to real life. When I asked them if they would use this math in real life they
told me that they had no clue or werent sure.

As far as Olivia is concerned, in the classroom I would spend more time with her on basic
properties of multiplication. I would focus less on speed tests and recall. She needs to work
through more multiplication word problems of higher cognitive demand using multiple
representations to show different ways to achieve the solutions. At home I would encourage her
parents to focus on the use of story problems as well, and less on the use of flashcards and recall
games. Her recall skills are profound, but she needs to work on number sense. Tom has the basic
concepts of multiplication down pat. For him I would focus on making real life connections with
multiplication through story problems that can be solved using multiple representations, similar
to Olivia. I would also recommend similar tactics to Olivias at home for him as well. His recall
skills are also profound but the fact that he wasnt able to connect multiplication to the real world
was a little unsettling. These types of problems would help them to make connections to
multiplication in the real world as well as work on different ways to solve multiplication
problems other than recollection of facts. What their teacher has failed to do is use highly
cognitive demanding questions in the classroom; I have only seen her use speed test. Accuracy is
no doubt important in multiplication and division however, when students lack the necessary
foundations to understand these problems then they will struggle with later math concepts. As
seen in Toms inability to connect multiplication to the real world an Olivias inability to write a
multiplication story problem, which involved connecting the math to the real world.
Alex seemed to have complex number sense skills. This should be celebrated and
reinforced. For him I would use mathematical problems of extremely high cognitive demand.
This would help bolster his problem solving skills and work on connections to real life and the
world. Since the algebraic thinking assessment did not touch on connections. I would also get
him to work on multiple representations of different mathematical problems. At home I would
encourage his parents to use these same practices, possibly by sending home math games for him
to play etc. Henry is somewhat different in the fact that he is in a Gifted Program at Shady
Grove. He already works through math problems that are higher than grade level. However, I
found it interesting that he did not have as profound of number sense skills as Alex had. He did
not compose and decompose numbers in the same manner. Meaning that his recall skills are
probably extremely strong, which isnt a bad thing but number sense is just as important. For him
I would give him cognitively demanding problems that encourage decomposition and
rearranging of numbers. This would help further enhance his problem solving skills as well as his

reasoning skills. I would also send these sorts of problems home with him every once and a
while.