Mathematics Program Evaluation

• Primary: First Grade: Kristin Catron and Taylor Rhemus; Second Grade: Emily Gentry and Kristen Lines; Kindergarten: Karen Himmelberg and Kassadie Propes
• South Campus Math Interventionist: Jami Troth
• Elementary: Third Grade: Erika Hill and Kelsey Redden; Fourth Grade: Emily Becker and Emily Engemann; Fifth Grade: Emily Newland
• Middle School: Alex Mertzlufft, Lindsay Morris, Sean Tillman, Lindsey Long, and Kim Whitworth
• High School: Meadow Jayko, Andrew Kendrick, Josie Rutledge, Wade Vandelicht
  

Kindergarten: Utilizing the assessments that come with our Bridges Mathematics curriculum and several teacher/team created assessments the kindergarten team can confirm that the students are progressing on their way to meeting grade level standards. Kindergarten just completed their first I-Ready assessment in January. This data will be compared with results from a second i-Ready Diagnostic assessment to be given at the end of the school year.

First Grade: One of the most important goals in first grade is addition and subtraction fluency within 10. Our team gives a pre and post-test for addition fluency as one of our SLOs. These tests show ample growth from the beginning of the year as students master addition concepts in the Bridges program. We also see growth on the i-Ready test, as seen below.

Second Grade: In second grade one of our main goals is for students to add and subtract within 20 fluently. With the Bridges program, we complete several fluency assessments to show growth/achievement with this standard. We also focus on showing an understanding of place value to 1000 starting the year ensuring students understand place value to 100 before moving to 1000. This is revisited and reassessed regularly throughout the school year in order to ensure a strong understanding in this foundational mathematics concept/skill.

Another tool that we utilize in mathematics is i-Ready. This online instructional site allows students to progress individually through software-identified math skills and concepts where the student needs additional practice. We begin the year with a baseline diagnostic and incorporate daily lessons individualized for each student. We have seen a tremendous amount of growth since we began implementation. We are grateful for this tool and hope we continue to fund this tool in the future. Below is a representation of the data from our most recent math i-Ready diagnostic from second grade.

• Kindergarten: We have begun to the process of increasing the implementation of the Bridges math program into our classrooms. This includes getting more comfortable with the pacing and how the lessons are taught throughout the units/year. Number corner is a newly implemented focus on our day where we get to teach new ideas while also build upon previous lessons. The teachers and students enjoy the hands-on activities and feel this program is developmentally appropriate for students in this grade level.
  
• First Grade: Those that have been teaching Bridges for the last three years are feeling very confident in the program. We have noticed huge gains in basic math concepts every year we have used this program. We also gain a better understanding of each component (number corner, whole group lessons, and work places) each year. The new teachers on our team are doing well learning and implementing this program.
• Second Grade: This is our third year implementing the Bridges math program. We have been getting better each year at using all the components in number corner (calendar) and during our math whole group and small group instruction. The online components have been very beneficial since the beginning of the pandemic.

• Kindergarten: We have great material to work with and are lucky to have instructional aides to help those students who need extra support.
• First Grade: Our team does an excellent job of year-long planning and knowing which materials we need for the upcoming year. We agree that our building would benefit from a dedicated math interventionist to help students lacking basic number sense.
• Second Grade: We are doing a great job. We try to use PLC time to plan out lessons/pacing and we use the pre test data to help inform our instruction.
• Having a full time math interventionist for our building would be beneficial. Jami does a great job but is often pulled to sub or is at the elementary building. We could provide additional support to even more primary students than we currently do if we could have an interventionist dedicated solely to our building.

In kindergarten, we get to have wonderful discussions on many different math ideas each morning throughout number corner learning. During this time, students share the patterns and predictions that are slowly released as the calendar gets displayed further into the month. This requires them to review and revise their thoughts daily. For March, we are learning how many more are needed to make ten and then graduate to the the next ten, how to graph, how to read graphs, and addition.

In first grade, students get to make a number rack to keep for their entire first grade year. We use these math tools to practice subitizing (building basic number sense) as well as addition and subtraction concepts. Some of these concepts are straight forward concepts such as 5 + 4, but some are more complex. For example, first graders are asked to use number racks to solve for missing parts (ex: 5 + __ = 9).

In second grade, we use virtual work places. We have found these to be incredibly important when trying to limit the amount of shared materials. Attached below is a screenshot of 2nd grades Unit 1 virtual work place. Each icon is a link that opens to the work place.

• Third Grade: We utilize pre- and post-assessment data to show growth, i-Ready math diagnostics three times a year, formative assessments throughout the units, number corner check ups, and work samples and checkpoints

• Fourth Grade: We utilize pre- and post-assessments, i-Ready math diagnostic three times a year, i-Ready progress on lessons, formative assessments every module, work samples, and checkpoints to assess student growth.

• Fifth Grade: We begin each unit with a Pre-Assessment. Throughout each unit data is collected through checkpoints, work samples, classwork, and quizzes. At the end of each unit, students compare their Post Assessment to their Pre-Assessment to document their personal growth. Classroom teachers supplement concepts by using the Teacher Toolkit component of i-Ready during RTI.

• Third Grade: Implementation of new curriculum (Bridges and Number Corner), there is also an Intervention curriculum that can be utilized. We use pre and post tests, working with and analyzing more data, more discussion and sharing of strategies among students.
• Fourth Grade: We have implemented Bridges and Number Corner. We have had more discussion of strategies and more focus on small groups. Every student has access to individualized i-Ready lessons.
• Fifth Grade: Implementation of Bridges in Mathematics with fidelity. The use of pre- and post- assessments as a means for monitoring student growth for each instructional unit. Through data collected from Bridges and i-Ready, math stations are implemented weekly to provide students an opportunity to apply the concepts.

• Third Grade: Our students would benefit from continuing to utilize our math interventionist and also using i-Ready to gather additional data. Since this is our second year with i-Ready, we can compare data from the past two years. We need additional time to look at the intervention materials to help more with RTI groups and to help support struggling students that do not have the outside intervention opportunity because we are limited in the number of students who can gain help from Jami Troth.
• Fourth Grade: We should continue to purchase the i-Ready toolbox. We need more math interventionists. As third grade said, we are limited on the number of students who can gain help from Jami Troth.
• Fifth Grade: We don’t have the staff we need to support our struggling math students. The addition of another math interventionist who would support fifth graders would be preferred. Another idea is to improve efforts to find math tutors. Presently, when a tutor is requested by a parent, an email is sent to teachers asking for availability. Consider finding a way to utilize A+ Mentors to provide tutoring when requested by a parent.

Third grade students use pie charts to show students their growth from their pre and post test during the units. They love seeing their growth! Below is an example of a classroom's growth over a unit.

Fourth Grade: Each test number is related to a specific test standard. After they get back their grades on their pretest and posttest, they input their grades into the spreadsheet and the excel sheet automatically color codes each standard depending on how they scored. This allows students to set goals and see their progress through each unit. Below is an example of a student's growth over a unit.

5th grade has done a couple of things. First, we will use homework quizzes and checkpoints to group students in our Wednesday small groups. Here we can zone in on certain areas that everyone in the group needs additional instruction. We also use Pre & Post Tests to graph growth on every unit. Students love to see where they started and finished.

We are transitioning to Pre and Post-assessments for every unit. Including the pre- and post-assessment, we will be utilizing 5 assessments to evaluate standard proficiency. These assessments are common for each grade level. iReady data is used to determine students who need additional intervention with our Math interventionist.

Last year the math team gained two new members. These past two years we have become very comfortable with our collaboration. We have gained great communication skills and have equal contribution to the team.

In 2019 we started using the Carnegie Learning text for 6th grade through Algebra. Over the last few years we have become more comfortable with the text and online resources. We have learned when we need to supplement curriculum with other resources when necessary.

Due to AMI, we have discovered additional online resources for teaching math. This includes but is not necessarily limited to: Khan Academy, Edia, Wizer.me, Google Classroom, and EdPuzzle. We have also grown more familiar with Mathia, the online component to our text.

Aretelabs is another online resource that has been used to provide enrichment opportunities to our 6th and 7th grade students. This is an online math competition platform that our students participated in after school against other school districts.

Sample Questions

With recent events of the past 2 years, the rigor of the Carnegie text does not always meet our students where they are at and we spend a lot of time finding resources that are a skill/drill and help reinforce math facts. Currently the middle school pulls students for RTI during Wednesday and Thursday eagle time based on low academic performance. Next year we plan on pulling students based on specific priority standard proficiency which will allow us to have targeted RTI instruction.

With the addition of 5th grade students coming to the middle school, one math interventionist will not be sufficient to reach every students’ needs. An additional math interventionist would allow us to have one interventionist for 5th and 6th grade and another for 7th and 8th grade. With one interventionist we don’t feel we will be able to meet all of our students’ needs.

6th Grade IV & DV Lesson Project

7th Grade Tiny House Project & Field Trip

8th Grade Pythagorean Theorem Project-student 1

8th Grade Pythagorean Theorem Project-student 2

We use our Student Learning Objective (SLO) data to show student growth. Below is an example of a pre-post test format that we use to show growth and monitor that students are improving scores based on our instructional methods. Below you can see a classroom example of student growth over a unit.

The High School is continuing instruction that aligns with inquiry based learning. We have increased technology usage (added 3 class sets of graphing calculators). Through apps and other online resources (specifically Desmos), we feel students are better able to support mathematical conclusions and use resources at their discretion. We have updated our assessment strategies to include an open response, checklist, and click and drag format vs. the traditional multiple choice test. We have also incorporated more online assessments (specifically Google Forms) to give students exposure to the online assessment format. Students are getting stronger in their utilization of the supports we are putting in place to answer these types of questions as multiple choice and process of elimination are phased out. They are using multiple methods of solving/checking their work to question the validity of their answers and determine what to do when an answer may not make sense. We feel the collaborative and constructivist type of teaching we are currently doing is moving our students in the right direction. We are seeing a difficulty with students transferring knowledge from one topic to another when they get to higher levels of math. We don’t know if this due to COVID absences or what, but we are trying to make the connections to address it. After analyzing our EOC data we are noticing students are doing better after adding in several objectives that were not previously covered. After looking through the EOC practice tests, we can confirm that this seems to help. We are updating our curriculum to better cover those objectives in a more timely fashion than in previous years. We added AP calc in the 2020-2021 school year. We have one teacher who has completed eMINTS training, a second that is scheduled to complete eMINTS when the program resumes. The department continues to share courses taught, because we feel it is beneficial for students to have a similar instructional experience no matter what teacher they have.

At the high school we will continue to align our power standards with the updated standards that Missouri implemented. We will continue to utilize technology and common assessments to enhance our student’s math skills.

We have discussed the addition of a 5th math teacher at the high school to reduce class size and offer additional math classes. We are still looking to offer an ACT prep course to help increase our Math ACT scores. The viability of this course is in question because of the rigidity of our course schedule. The addition of a 5th math teacher would allow us to open up our schedule to offer new courses such as ACT prep, Statistics, as well as remedial or honors versions of courses already offered.

• Derivative Project
• Rational Equations Flow Chart
• City Designer Desmos - Example