ASSIGNMENT THREE: PERFORMANCE ASSESSMENT 1

Assignment Three: Performance Assessment

Olivia Denk, Hannah Fuller, Kendell Kirby, and Lauren Mattes

Kennesaw State University

ECUC 3305-01

Dr. Theresa Alviar

29 April 2019
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Part One

Rationale

The purpose of a performance assessment is to “produce accurate evidence of the

intended learning in a context that approximates realistic conditions, while avoiding sources of

bias and distortion” (Chappuis, 2012, p. 211). Our performance assessment addresses different

types of learning. The first reason this performance assessment will meet our student’s needs is it

allows the students to solve problems related to volume in multiple ways. The students are not

limited to one single answer or process. Our performance assessment asks the students to find

objects that they can find the volume of, find the volume, and display it on a poster with

explanations of how they found the volume of the objects. Not every student will have the same

answer in the end, and their processes may differ. This performance assessment allows students

to work in their own individual ways and explain how they solved their task. For the student we

are focusing on, this assessment is beneficial. The student we are working with is an ELL with

low math proficiency. This performance task allows the student to have a physical, tangible

representation of the content. For example, the student was confused about the difference

between the length, width, and height of an object. This activity requires the student to physically

measure these attributes, which can better solidify the concepts in her mind. Our student needs

less structure and more independent guidelines. With this task, the student can work in any way

that the chose as long as they are able to justify and explain their answers. This gives the student

the freedom to explore and expand their knowledge on the topic.

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Description and Alignment

For our performance assessment, we have chosen to have the students create a poster to

display their finding on the volume of various objects. On this poster, the students will be asked

to display their three items and show the measurements that were used to find the volume of the

object. Additionally, they will show their work and process of finding the volume of their three

chosen items. Lastly, the poster should have an explanation of how they solved for volume and

how their work aligns with the explanation.

To start this task, the students will be asked to bring three items from home that they can

find the volume of. These items can be anything that they would like, as long as they have the

tools and knowledge to solve for the volume. The students will work individually to measure

their items and find the volume of each one. Once they have solved for the volume of their

individual items, they will create a poster to display their findings. The poster should have a

drawing of their items and measurements to go along. Then, the students should show their work

for each item and their process for how they solved for volume. Lastly, the students should

include an explanation of their work and solutions and how the strategies they used to solve for

volume. The students will display their posters and the class will do a gallery walk to see the

different strategies used to find the volume of the various items on the individual posters.

While constructing our assessment plan, we framed our assessment process around the

Five Key Components of Assessment. The first component we will discuss is Clear Purpose. We

have created three formative assessments that correlate with our standard. We can use these

formative assessments to gather data and determine students’ comprehension of the content. The

assessments will allow us to determine the strengths and weaknesses of the students. We will be
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able to use this data to plan our future instruction, as we can focus more on their weaknesses and

correcting any misconceptions that the students may have on the topic. We have created a

performance task as our summative assessment. This performance task will assess the students’

overall understanding of the content that they have learned. We will be able to see trends in the

data collected from this assessment in terms of their strengths and weaknesses of the students.

This data can show us any concepts that still need clarification before moving on to the next

topic. We can also revise our future instructional strategies for this content. We will be able to

see where students struggle the most, which will tell us that we need to spend more time on that

area during future instruction.

The Georgia standard aligned with this performance assessment is ​MGSE5.MD.5​: Relate

volume to the operations of multiplication and addition and solve real world and mathematical

problems involving volume. Our task aligns with this standard because this is a real world

problem. The students are asked to bring in three objects of their choice that they could find the

volume of. Then, the students are asked to find the volume and display their work and

explanations on a poster board. The variety of objects that the students bring in will allow others

to see how to find the volume of various items and how those strategies can be similar or

different. Our learning targets for our assignments are: “I can use multiplication to find the

volume of different figures.” While designing our assignments, we made sure to keep our

assignments in line with this learning target. We have asked the students to answer a series of

questions involving utilizing a multiplication formula to find the volume of different figures. The

students will also be linking back to prior knowledge by applying measurement to the tasks.
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We designed our assessments to be clear, concise, and understandable to our students.

We have provided our students with different formative assessments to ensure that students feel

comfortable and confident in the material before completing the summative assessment. The

summative assessment will be a poster portraying their knowledge of volume. We will be

providing our students with different resources to help structure and facilitate their work on the

summative assessment. These resources include a rubric, a worksheet to help organize their work

for the poster, and a task sheet to inform the students of everything they need to have on their

final product. We designed our performance task in a way that will easily portray their students’

knowledge of the content, as they are asked to not only find the volume but explain their

strategies and defend their answers as well. We designed our performance task to ensure that it is

understandable for the students and provides us with clear data on the students’ knowledge. The

poster allows students to have the freedom to decorate and express their information in any way

that they want while also allowing us, as teachers, to clearly assess their progress on the content.

Part Two

Formative Assessment Materials

Before the students begin their performance task, they will complete a series of formative

assessments. The first formative assessment we have created is a Kahoot! Quiz. The quiz

contains information about volume, the multiplication formula, and different practice problems

for the students to try. The students will be given an electronic device to complete the quiz on.

They will be presented with a question, have ample think-time to find their answer, then they

will answer on their electronic device. We chose to implement the Kahoot! Activity in order to

make an assessment fun and engaging for the students. This activity also provides whole-class
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data in real time. At the end of each question, the results are portrayed on the screen by giving

the number of people who answered each answer choice displayed numerically and in a

bar-graph format. This data will help us determine areas of strength and areas of weakness for

the students. After each question, time is allotted to work through the problem as a class if

needed.

Our next formative assessment is a practice worksheet. The worksheet serves as more

practice problems for the students before they complete the performance assessment. The

students will have access to math manipulatives that are models of cubes and rectangular prisms.

The students will determine the length, width, and height of the figures. They will fill in the

measurements on the worksheets and multiply to find the volume of each figure. This activity

closely mirrors the process used on the performance task since they will be measuring the figures

themselves before multiplying to find the volume. The goal of this assessment is to ensure that
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the students are comfortable with the process and to determine their levels of comprehension. If

we notice a student that is falling behind or not grasping the content, we’ll be able to intervene

and work with the students in a small-group setting before completing any summative

assessments.

Once the formative assessments have been completed, we will have the data that we need

to determine the strengths and weaknesses of each student. Using this data, we will create math

groups based on students with similarities in data. For example, if there are three to four students
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who struggle with the multiplication process, they will be in a group together. These math groups

will meet with the teacher for small group instruction that is geared toward their needs. The

students will receive practice problems that focus on their struggling areas and they will solve it

individually before reviewing it as a whole group. Math groups allow for more personalized

instruction of the material. The teacher is able to easily target any errors or misconceptions made

by the students and they can fix them in a more personal setting. This will benefit the students by

directly targeting their needs for this concept. The teachers also benefit from the individualized

instruction as it provides more feedback on the students’ progress.

Summative Assessments

Our performance task will serve as a summative assessment. For the performance task, the

students are asked to find three items from home that they can find the volume of. These objects

can be shoe boxes, blocks, cereal boxes, or anything that they choose. The students will be asked

to find and record the measurements of these objects and multiply to find their volume. Once the

students have completed those steps, they will create a poster to demonstrate their work. The

poster will contain the students’ measurements, the work they did to find the volume, an

explanation of their strategy that justifies their answer, and a picture of the item they measured.

Once the students have created their poster, they will take turns presenting them to their peers

and classmates. To help facilitate the creation of their posters, we have provided the students

with multiple resources. These resources include a task sheet and an organization chart. These

resources will help the students organize their work and identify the components that they need

for the assignment.

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Part 3

Rubric and Feedback

An important factor of assessment is the communication of results. Giving the students

feedback on their work will help them determine areas they need to improve upon for future

assignments. We created a rubric that is written in student-friendly language that the students are

able to utilize both during the planning process of their presentation and after they have

presented it. The rubric lays out specific guidelines and criteria that will be assessed on this

assessment. The students can go through the rubric and check-off the criteria as they include it

on their poster to ensure that they have all the components for a high grade. The rubric is set up
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in a checklist format for ease of student use. Once the student has presented, the teacher will fill

out the same rubric to communicate their feedback. Using the same rubric will help make the

feedback more relatable and understandable to the student.

Another feedback tool that we will utilize is a 3-2-1 feedforward template that is filled

out by the teacher following student presentations. The teacher will write notes on three things

that they liked about the presentation, two things that needed to improve, and one thing from

their presentation that they were particularly strong on that they should share with a classmate.

The students will have the chance to participate in a peer-review activity once every student has

presented. They will pair up with their classmates and share the final piece of information noted
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on their feedforward template as well as constructive comments on their peers’ presentation. For

this assessment, the students will receive both the rubric and the feedforward template from their

teacher. We decided to do both of these documents so that the students will have ample

information on what they did well on versus what needs to be improved. This feedback will

allow them to grow and learn from the experience of this assignment.
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References

Chappius, J., Stiggins, R., Chappius, S., & Arter, J. (2012). ​Classroom Assessment for Student

Learning: Doing It Right - Using It Well​(2nd ed.). Boston, MA: Pearson.