Assessment in Desmos

We had a wacky fall semester. Because of some construction, we started later than usual, then we lost a week to Hurricane Irma, and before I knew it, I had to bump two topics I usually teach in the fall (systems of linear inequalities and absolute value functions) to the spring.

As I was looking through activities in the Desmos Bank, I found one that I really liked and thought I could actually adapt into an assessment since this entire "mini-unit" is comprised of graphs.  We did multiple Desmos activities for each, and I prepared my students from the beginning that this test would be different than other tests they've taken this year. This is the assessment

On test day, we used iPads and Apple Classroom. I was able to lock their screens into Safari (though not into that specific tab) and see that they remained in Desmos the entire time on my iPad. Through the Desmos Teacher part of Activity Builder, I could see their specific work and progress through the activity. Having both seemed like overkill at times but was also really nice for a well-rounded perspective.

After the test, I gave them a quick survey to get feedback about their experience. Every student but one had incredibly positive comments.



For the first class, I neglected to give them paper. They are used to writing on the white board table with dry erase markers, but for integrity reasons, I didn't want them doing that. After their feedback about how hard it was to do without writing anything down, I gave my other two classes a blank piece of paper. And I gifted that first class an extra point (out of 25) for being my guinea pigs (which I don't ever do).

I wasn't sure how I was going to grade/return their tests, but I ended up creating a score sheet that listed the screen number and a brief description. Then I had a blank next to each possible place for earning points. I like being able to pause the activity so that I know they can't get back into it and change their answers, but I don't like pausing the activity because I want them to be able to go over their work.


**The above is the blog post I intended to write last weekend after giving this assessment. Then this week happened.**

The results of this assessment blew all other tests out of the water. I had higher scores than ever, and they had answered in really interesting ways. However, I had a few students who REALLY struggled. Since it was such a unique experience in the classroom, I knew we had to spend some time discussing it after the fact.

From the teacher dashboard, I was able to anonymize their names so that we could speak about individual student work without them knowing who was who (and even without knowing who they were themselves!) In one of my classes, the resource teacher was sitting in to check in with some of her students, and her reaction to the depth with which we could discuss work was one of my favorite parts. No one said, "Aristotle is stupid. Aristotle doesn't know anything. etc." instead, they made comments like, "Aristotle didn't read the directions. Aristotle needs to ask more questions in class. Aristotle should come see you for help." We were able to talk about why students who had used inclusive inequalities that went through the point were correct but those who had a dashed line even though it looked like it went through the point didn't actually include the point. There were so many "aha" moments for students who had memorized this idea but didn't really get it until that discussion. We could also speak about how different answers could all be correct and how elegant some of the solutions were. That discussion might be the best thing we've done all year.

Unfortunately, I'm not sure I can really work something like this into my assessments for the rest of the year, but it was a total hit. I'd love to move this direction in the future.

An attempt at SBG in a non-SBG environment

For several years now, I have given a group task instead of a test for our unit on functions in Algebra 1. We do so many collaborative group activities as we explore patterns, domain/range, and functions/relations that giving a group assessment seems the only reasonable choice.

Students (in groups of four) travel to seven different stations around the school. Many of the tasks are open-ended, all are more challenging that I would give on a standard test. While I like the activity a lot, this year I spent a good deal of time thinking about assessing the task. I wanted it to be out of a certain number of points that was not necessarily the same as the number of parts within each station. Rather than grading each step for its own sake, I was forced to consider the entire body of work and determine the students' level of understanding. I realized that this is essentially how SBG works and why I find it so preferable to traditional grading. In traditional grades, it might be the case that one student misses more parts of problems (and thus earns a lower grade) but has better overall understanding than another student who has a surface level understanding but can better complete the steps of a process. Of course, this also speaks to the nature of the question being asked.

It may have taken me four years, but I finally understand why I love my assessment plan for this unit more than any of the others!