Supporting Rigorous Mathematics Teaching and Learning

1. Supporting Rigorous Mathematics Teaching and Learning Deepening our Understanding of the CCSS Via a Constructed Response Assessment Tennessee Department of Education High School Mathematics Algebra 1

2. Assessment as Learning Assessment of Learning Assessment for Learning Forms of Assessment

3. Session Goals Participants will: • deepen understanding of the Common Core State Standards (CCSS) for Mathematical Practice and Mathematical Content; • understand how Constructed Response Assessments (CRAs) assess the CCSS for both Mathematical Content and Practice; and • understand the ways in which CRAs assess students’ conceptual understanding.

4. Overview of Activities Participants will: • analyze Constructed Response (CRAs) in order to determine the way they are assessing the CCSS for Mathematics; • analyze and discuss the CCSS for Mathematical Content and CCSS for Mathematical Practice; • discuss what it means to develop and assess conceptual understanding; and • discuss the CCSS related to the tasks and the implications for instruction and learning.

5. The Common Core State Standards The standards consist of: • The CCSS for Mathematical Content • The CCSS for Mathematical Practice

6. Analyzing aConstructed Response Assessment

7. Tennessee Focus Clusters Algebra 1 • Create equations that describe numbers or relationships. • Solve equations and inequalities in one variable. • Represent and solve equations and inequalities graphically. • Interpret functions that arise in applications in terms of the context.

8. Analyzing Assessment Items(Private Think Time) Four assessment items have been provided: • Buddy Bags • Disc Jockey Decisions  • What’s the point? • Paulie’sPen For each assessment item: • solve the assessment item; and • make connections between the standard(s) and the assessment item.

9. 1. Buddy Bags For a student council fundraiser, Anna and Bobby have spent a total of $55.00 on supplies to create Buddy Bags. They plan to charge $2.00 per Buddy Bag sold. Anna created the graph below from an equation to represent the profit from  the number of Buddy Bags sold. • Determine the equation Anna used to create the graph if x represents the number of Buddy Bags sold and y represents the profit in dollars. Use mathematical reasoning to explain your equation. • Bobby claims that Anna’s graph is incorrect because it does not show that they plan to charge $2.00 per Buddy Bag. Do you agree or disagree with Bobby? Use mathematical reasoning to support your decision. • Anna says, “I connected the points to represent the equation, but by connecting the points I am not representing the context of the problem.” Use mathematical reasoning to explain why she is correct.

10. 2. Disc Jockey Decisions The student council has asked Dion to be the disc jockey for the Fall Banquet. He has been asked to play instrumental music during the first hour while the students are eating dinner. During the last 15 minutes of the banquet the school choir will sing. For the remaining time, Dion will choose popular songs to play. • Write an equation to determine the number of popular songs, p, that Dion can choose if the songs Dion chooses have an average run time of 3.5 minutes and the total time for the Fall Banquet is t minutes. Use mathematical reasoning to justify that your equation is correct. • Use your equation from Part a to determine the number of popular songs that Dion can choose if the banquet will be held from 6:00 – 10:00pm. • Dion decides to organize the music another way. He decides to play 50 popular songs. Write and solve an algebraic equation to determine the average run time, r, of the 50 popular songs Dion can choose if the average run time is represented in minutes by r. Use mathematical reasoning to justify that your equation is correct.

11. 3. What’s the point? • Determine the equation Colton used to create the table. Use mathematical reasoning to justify that the equation is correct. • Destiny sees Colton’s work and argues that any table contains just a subset of the solutions to Mr. Williams’ equation. Do you agree or disagree with Destiny? Explain why or why not. Mr. Williams asks his Algebra 1 class to find the solutions to an equation in two variables with a domain in the set of real numbers.  Colton correctly creates the table below using values from the domain of the equation. He then uses his table to create a graph.

12. 4. Paulie’sPen Scarlet has to build a rectangular pen for her peacock, Paulie. Scarlet has P feet of fencing. • Scarlet decides the length of the pen will be 12 feet. Write an equation describing the relationship between P and the width of the pen, w. Explain your thinking in the context of the problem. • Solve the equation for w. Show your work. • Scarlet changes her mind and decides that the width of Paulie’spen will be half of the length of his pen. Write an equation describing the relationship between P and the width of the pen, w. Explain your thinking in the context of the problem. • Solve the equation for w. Show your work.

13. Discussing Content Standards (Small Group Time) For each assessment item: With your small group, discuss the connections between the content standard(s) and the assessment item.

14. Deepening Understanding of the Content Standards via the Assessment Items(Whole Group) As a result of looking at the assessment items, what do you better understand about the specifics of the content standards? What are you still wondering about?

15. The CCSS for Mathematical ContentCCSS Conceptual Category – Algebra Common Core State Standards, 2010

16. The CCSS for Mathematical ContentCCSS Conceptual Category – Algebra Common Core State Standards, 2010

17. The CCSS for Mathematical ContentCCSS Conceptual Category – Algebra Common Core State Standards, 2010

18. The CCSS for Mathematical ContentCCSS Conceptual Category – Functions Common Core State Standards, 2010

19. Determining the Standards for Mathematical Practice Associated with the Constructed Response Assessment

20. Getting Familiar with the CCSS for Mathematical Practice(Private Think Time) Count off by 8. Each person reads one of the CCSS for Mathematical Practice. Read your assigned Mathematical Practice. Be prepared to share the “gist” of the Mathematical Practice.

21. The CCSS for Mathematical Practice Common Core State Standards for Mathematics, 2010, NGA Center/CCSSO • Make sense of problems and persevere in solving them. • Reason abstractly and quantitatively. • Construct viable arguments and critique the reasoning of others. • Model with mathematics. • Use appropriate tools strategically. • Attend to precision. • Look for and make use of structure. • Look for and express regularity in repeated reasoning.

22. Discussing Practice Standards(Small Group Time) Each person has 2 minutes to share important information about his/her assigned Mathematical Practice.

23. Discussing Practice Standards(Small Group Time) For each assessment item: With your small group, discuss the connections between the practice standards and the assessment item.

24. The CCSS for Mathematical Practice Common Core State Standards, 2010 • Make sense of problems and persevere in solving them. • Reason abstractly and quantitatively. • Construct viable arguments and critique the reasoning of others. • Model with mathematics. • Use appropriate tools strategically. • Attend to precision. • Look for and make use of structure. • Look for and express regularity in repeated reasoning.

25. Deepening Understanding of the Practice Standards via the Assessment Items(Whole Group) Which standards for mathematical practice do you better understand? What are you still wondering about?

26. Assessing Conceptual Understanding

27. Rationale We have now examined assessment items and discussed their connection to the CCSS for Mathematical Content and Practice. A question that needs considering, however, is if and how these assessments will give us a good means of measuring the conceptual understandings our students have acquired. In this activity, you will have an opportunity to consider what it means to develop conceptual understanding, as described in the CCSS for Mathematics, and what it takes to assess for it.

28. Assessing for Conceptual Understanding The set of CRA items are designed to assess student understanding of expressions and equations. Look across the set of related items. What might ateacher learn about a student’s understanding by looking at the student’s performance across the set of items as a whole? What is varying from one item to the next?

29. Conceptual Understanding What do the authors mean by conceptual understanding? How might analyzing student performance on this set of assessments help us determine if students have a deep understanding of the assessed standards?

30. Developing Conceptual Understanding Knowledge that has been learned with understanding provides the basis of generating new knowledge and for solving new and unfamiliar problems.  When students have acquired conceptual understanding in an area of mathematics, they see connections among concepts and procedures and can give arguments to explain why some facts are consequences of others. They gain confidence, which then provides a base from which they can move to another level of understanding. Kilpatrick, J., Swafford, J., & Findell, B. (2001). Adding it up: Helping children learn mathematics. Washington, DC: National Academy Press

31. The CCSS on Conceptual Understanding Common Core State Standards for Mathematics, 2010, p. 8, NGA Center/CCSSO In this respect, those content standards which set an expectation of understanding are potential “points of intersection” between the Standards for Mathematical Content and the Standards for Mathematical Practice. These points of intersection are intended to be weighted toward central and generative concepts in the school mathematics curriculum that most merit the time, resources, innovative energies, and focus necessary to qualitatively improve the curriculum, instruction, assessment, professional development, and student achievement in mathematics.

32. Assessing Concept Image Tall (1992) differentiates between the mathematical definition of a concept and the concept image, which is the entire cognitive structure that a person has formed related to the concept. This concept image is made up of pictures, examples and non-examples, processes, and properties. A strong concept image is a rich, integrated, mental representation that allows the student to flexibly move between multiple formulations and representations of an idea. A student who has connected mathematical ideas in this way can create and use a model to analyze a situation, uncover patterns and synthesize them to form an integrated picture. They can also use symbols meaningfully to describe generalizations which then provides a base from which they can move to another level of understanding. Brown, Seidelmann, & Zimmermann. In the trenches: Three teachers’ perspectives on moving beyond the math wars. http://mathematicallysane.com/analysis/trenches.asp

33. Developing and Assessing Understanding Why is it important, when assessing a student’s conceptual understanding, to vary items in these ways?

34. Using the Assessment to Think About Instruction In order for students to perform well on the CRA, what are the implications for instruction? What kinds of instructional tasks will need to be used in the classroom? What will teaching and learning look like and sound like in the classroom?

35. Step Back • What have you learned about the CCSS for Mathematical Content that surprised you? • What is the difference between the CCSS for Mathematical Content and the CCSS for Mathematical Practice? • Why do we say that students must work on both the Standards for Mathematical Content and Standards for Mathematical Practice?

36. Functions and Modeling http://commoncoretools.wordpress.com/2012/04/ccss_progression_functions_2012_12 04.bis.pdf, pg. 4 In modeling situations, knowledge of the context and statistics are sometimes used together to find algebraic expressions that best fit an observed relationship between quantities. Then the algebraic expressions can be used to interpolate (i.e., approximate or predict function values between and among the collected data values) and to extrapolate (i.e., to approximate or predict function values beyond the collected data values). One must always ask whether such approximations are reasonable in the context.

37. 1. Buddy Bags Common Core State Standards, 2010

38. 2. Disc Jockey Decisions Common Core State Standards, 2010

39. 3. What’s the point? Common Core State Standards, NGA Center/CCSSO, 2010

40. 4. Paulie’sPen Common Core State Standards, 2010