Alg 2 (or Alg 3-4 in my District) Skills Assessment


Before I really get into this one, I must first say that I will use the terms Alg 3 to mean the first semester and Alg 4 to mean the second semester of my District’s second year algebra class.  I am specifying this because as I have talked to and grown in my understanding of Math, I realized that every district does this differently.  This is my attempt at mitigating  a little of that confusion.

Right, so before I can post the third (and far from final) draft of my Alg 3-4 Skills checklist, I think it would behoove me to first share what my starting point is.  Here are my district’s expectations for Alg 3 and Alg 4.

First off, ignore the dates at the bottom.  This class has not been updated with either the new standards (adopted a year and a half ago) or been re-formatted to be standards based instead of textbook based.

Does anybody else see a difficulty with what I am trying?  Some of the topics here are HUGE!

So, I needed some ground rules.  First off, I can not assess everything I teach.  This is vital, and essential.  Second, these skill assessments can not be the only assessments I give.  I am going to have to assess in a comprehensive manner. in addition to my skills assessments.  Finally, my skills list must fit on one page, single sided.

Okay, that last one seems kind of arbitrary, but it is not.  Part of my goal with this assessment strategy is to give the learners a recognizable and achievable set of goals, even if, or ESPECIALLY if, they hate math.

Giving them a three page list of skills the first day of class is saying to those learners, “you are going to fail this class because the amount of things to learn is ginormous”.  I can’t do that.

One page, even if I have to leave off some skills, even if I have to double up on some skills, is still better than overloading my learners.  Now the burden is on ME to focus my efforts and make sure I don’t leave off some important aspects of the math.  Their burden is to learn.

So, here it is. 

I tried to match my District’s blueprint, since that is what the CRT is based on.  This is not a final draft, by any means.  I am very open to suggestions and criticisms.

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