Balanced Assessment in Mathematics Review

To recap the last couple of weeks, the group and I have been working on breaking down standards and reviewing lesson plans. This week, I will be reviewing an assessment from the Balanced Assessment Project which is a project to provide a collection of assessments that provide teachers with an understanding of a student's knowledge of mathematics. The assessment I will be reviewing is called Dot-to-Dot which applies to the standard, CC.2.2.2A.2: Work with equal groups of objects to gain foundations for multiplication.

            The Dot-to-Dot assessment asks the student to do a connect the dot activity by connecting the even numbers in a picture and connecting multiples of three in another picture. This activity allows students to work with repeated addition and practice working with equal groups in a fun, interactive fashion. Unfortunately, there is no way for us, as teachers, to tell if a student is simply counting each number one by one unless the student is totally off and did not create the picture they were supposed to create. It is more of a self-assessment activity for the students.