MED 308

Assignment #6 

1. Complete the diagonals of quadrilateral activity on your geoboards.  Write two pages discussing the activity in terms of what level of students you might use the activity with, what prerequisite knowledge is needed, what level of the van Hiele model the activity targets (explain) and lastly, explain where the activity fits into the phases of learning (from the van Hiele model) as you would use them.  The activity as given to you is one possible form that could be used.  You should feel free enhance the form when discussing the levels and phases.  That is, there may be more than one way to use/structure the activity that addresses different phases of learning and/or levels and you should discuss what your approach would be when using this activity and how that correlates with the level and phase.

2. The National Assessment of Educational Progress is an ongoing assessment of our nation's elementary, middle, and high school students.  It is conducted every 4 years (mostly) and involves approximately 10,000 students.  Below is a link to the NAEP sample question webpage.  I would like you to get a sense of how our students (as a nation) do on area and perimeter questions and the level of difficulty of the questions.  So, select Search options and then under advanced search choose mathematics.  Select Measurement for the content and grade 8, and later grade 12, and leave the other fields set to all.  There are 45 questions within this area that have been released over the years (grade 8).  Since we are specifically looking at area and perimeter, you may skip those referring to volume, length, unit conversion, etc.  As you look at the questions, click on the performance data button to see how well the students did and note year of administration.  Select three questions that you find striking in terms of the students' responses and for these questions of interest, also look at student responses and the scoring guide/key.  Print out the questions and the data for three questions at each level. Some questions were used with both grade 8 and grade 12 students.

http://nces.ed.gov/nationsreportcard/ITMRLS/

3. Click on the link below and download the pdf file.  This is from the New York State Education Department's website.  Read the sections relevant to the Math A curriculum.  You need to know the seven key ideas by name and the content within each, so read these thoroughly. 

Commencement Section of the Core Curriculum (Math A and Math B) (Grades 9-12)

4. Search the past 3 or so Math A exams and compile a set of Key Idea 3 questions that we can use for discussion on Tuesday.  The end of the scoring guide for each exam has the questions listed by key idea.