I would like to address how my post-assessment aligns with the Oregon core standards. The curriculum used at Falls City Elementary for 8^th grade math is actually an Oregon curriculum. Each lesson of the book is already aligned with an Oregon core standard, but the assessments that come with the curriculum are not labeled in this way. I used a pre-designed assessment for my post-assessment, but I edited it to make it shorter. I also labeled each question with the standards it aligns with.  The first eight questions align with Oregon core standard 8.1.3 which states: Identify and interpret the properties (i.e. slope, intercepts, continuity, and discreteness) of linear relationships as they are shown in the different representations and recognize proportional relationships ( y/x = k or y = kx ) as a special case. My unit addressed most of this standard, although my cooperating teacher mentioned to me that the special case of direct variation (or y=kx) would be addressed later in the curriculum so I did not need to include that in my assessments.

            Question 1 and 2 ask the student to graph and equation that is in slope-intercept form. In order to draw a graph the student must identify the slope and y-intercept in the equation and interpret how to translate this to graphical form.

            Questions 3 and 4 ask the student to write an equation from a given graph. Again the student must identify slope and y-intercept on the graph and interpret how to translate that information into an equation form.

            Questions 5, 6 and 7 ask students to write a linear equation from key information. These questions begin with the slope and y-intercept as given and then get progressively more difficult. This again addresses properties of slope and y-intercepts as well as different representations of linear relationships.

            Question 8 asks students to convert an equation in standard form to slope-intercept form. Students must identify that the equation is not in slope intercept form, and they must interpret how to convert this equation.

            The other Oregon core standard that I addressed in my pre-assessment was 8.1.4, which states: Use linear functions and equations to represent, analyze and solve problems, and to make predictions and inferences.

            Question number 9 on my pre-assessment aligns with this standard as it asks students to represent a story problem using a linear equation and then to further use this equation to solve for and make predictions based on the information given in the question.  

            The overall objectives for my unit were as follows:

1.) Students will be able to draw a graph from a linear equation on graph paper.(Cognitive, Applying)

2.) Students will be able to translate an equation in writing from standard form to slope intercept form. (Cognitive, Understanding)

3.) Students will be able to write a linear equation from key information (slope, y-intercept, etc.) (Cognitive, Applying)

4.) Students will be able to solve for a missing part of a linear equation using key information. (Cognitive, Applying)

5.) Students will be able to write their own linear equations to solve problems based on real world scenarios. (Cognitive, Creating)

            Question 1 and 2 on the pre-assessment relates to my objective number 1. A large part of using linear equations and understanding linear relationships is being able to represent this concept in graphical form.

            Question 8 addresses objective number 2. Students should be able to identify an equation that is not in slope-intercept form and translate it to slope-intercept form (this is so they will eventually be able to graph the equation more easily).

            Question 3 and 4 relate to objective 3 in that students must identify the key information in the graph and use it to write an equation. Questions 5, 6 and 7 also address this objective as the key information is given and students must use it to write a linear equation.

            Questions 6 and 7 also address objective number 4 as the information given to write a linear equation is incomplete and students must use it to solve for the missing part and then write the equation.

            Question 9 addresses objective number 5. This is a story problem loosely based on a real world scenario and students must interpret the information and write their own linear equation to represent what is happening in the problem.

            I chose a post assessment that was almost exactly like my pre-assessment. It was a tiered test where the questions were ordered from simple to difficult and they were also presented in the order that they were taught in, as the concepts build on each other. Like my pre-assessment this test was originally composed of multiple choice section, short answer, and a longer free response. I decided not to use the multiple choice because I did not want students to try and guess the answer, and the free response did not seem to be any different than the short answer story problem that was question number 9. The free response did have a graphing portion, but I felt that the graphing skills were adequately addressed in questions 1 and 2. I decided to have two graphing questions because that was something we did throughout the unit and I wanted the assessment to reflect that. I also wanted the post assessment to be similar in format to the pre-assessment so that my students would know what to expect.

            Before I passed out the post-assessment I asked all of my students to be quiet. I explained that this test was similar to the pre-assessment but that they would receive a grade. I told them to try their best and that all of these questions were just like the ones we had been practicing for the last three weeks. I explained that they needed to read every question, show all of their work, and attempt every problem. When they were finished, they needed to raise their hand and I would come collect the test.

            The class average on the post assessment was about an 86%. The lowest score was 55% and the highest score was 100%. In the slideshow below there are some examples of student work that met and did not meet. Even the example of the work that did not meet however, show great improvement from pre to post assessment. I used the same rubric (scale of 0-3) that I used on the pre-assessment, but because there were 9 questions I ended up scoring it out of 27 and then calculating a percentage. I averaged these scores to get the class average. All but 3 of my students received a 2 or better on every question, which I determined as the score to meet my learning objectives. I determined this because this score was awarded for a conceptually correct answer, but with some errors (such as a calculation error).