Assessment Analysis

Geometry Math Assessment

Objective: Interpret and calculate the side lengths and angle measures
of right triangles using trigonometry.
This topic is the first math content we cover in Geometry B (2nd
half of geometry). Proceeding the formative assessment we spent
three days talking about right triangle trigonometry. The first day I
introduced the sine, cosine, and tangent functions and how they work
with right triangles. I then gave them a worksheet to give me an idea
of how they grasped the idea of opposite, hypotenuse, and adjacent
sides and their correlation to the three trigonometric functions. The
second day I introduced how they can use sine, cosine, and tangent to
solve for side lengths and angle measures. Also, I went through and
showed them how to use the sine, cosine, and tangent buttons on their
calculator. I then gave them another worksheet to give them practice
with this idea. A second worksheet was given showing how these ideas
can be used in a real life situation. The third day we came in and I went
over a few of the tough questions on the worksheet and then I handed
out my assessment to see how they were picking up the trigonometry
ideas.
When creating the quiz I made six different versions of the quiz
ensuring that students do not cheat and if they do, it will be obvious to
me. Since I had three classes taking the same quiz I was able to get
numerous results. There were a total of 76 students that took the quiz.
The quiz was a total of 11 points and the quiz was 8 questions. It was a
fill in the blank and short answer quiz. The reason I decided to give the
quiz with fill in the blank and short answer was because I want to make
sure they have a strong handle on the concepts before moving on to
harder material that is based off of these ideas. I found the following
results:
Mean= 9.3, 85%
Median= 11, 100%
Mode= 11, 100%
After entering all of the data from their scores and calculating the
mean, median, and mode I decided to take data on how many students
got each question wrong. Students struggled on 6, 7, and 8 the most.

These were all 2-point problems so it was more unlikely for a student to
get the whole problem right. It had multiple steps so I found that
because of that it provided a larger chance for students to miss a step
or to make a math mistake. This is one of the reason students missed
questions. Another reason is because some of the students did not
complete the worksheets that led up to the assessment. I analyzed the
students that did not do well on the quiz and if they turned in the
worksheets. 80% of students that failed the quiz also failed to turn in
the worksheets. Students struggled with the algebra skills needed to
solve trigonometry problems. This helped me, as a teacher because I
know knew that my students pre-requisite algebra skills were not as
strong as I had anticipated. I decided to make a graph of my students
scores and how they looked in a bar graph. This is below:

From here I created an action plan for my students. Since a

majority of my students did very well on the quiz I did not find it
valuable to re-quiz them. I thought this would be very frustrating for
the students that had done well. So instead, I allowed them to get in
groups of 3-4 to ask their peers about questions they had on the quiz. I

walked around during this time and made sure to talk with students
that had received a score of below 7 to help answer questions they
had. Additionally, at the end of the chapter the students would be
taking a test over this material again. Before the quiz I would breeze
through the algebra part of solving trigonometry questions because I
assumed my students had mastered this skill. So when doing direct
instruction and helping students one-on-one I made sure I explained
and slowed down when actually solving the problems. Also, I made a
goal for myself to give my students more positive reinforcement about
turning in worksheets and their homework. The last thing that I wanted
to do was to make phone calls home to parents of students who had
failed the quiz. My objective was not to tell the parents/guardians that
their child had failed the quiz, but let them know that we had a test
coming up soon. Also, to let parents know that I am available to help
before/after school or during lunch. I sent an email out to all parents
letting them know when the test was going to be so they knew what
was coming up. My students algebra skills continued to increase and
they improved from the quiz to the test.