Using Student Work Samples

I know you've all heard that sharing work samples with the students and letting them sort them according to a rubric is a good teaching strategy.  I tweaked it a bit, but I did use student work for a lesson today.  

My students have been working on drawing pictures as one of the Math strategies or tools for problem solving.  I gave a formative assessment and discovered that many of my students made mistakes when drawing pictures to solve subtraction problems.  The mistakes fell under two main errors.  Many students counted incorrectly and some forgot to look at the symbol.  I decided to copy an example of each type of mistake and one that was correct.  I cut and pasted the three samples onto a piece of paper and ran copies. I made sure the student names were omitted.  

Today I passed out the copies and had their groups look at each problem.  I told them they were going to pretend to be the teachers.  I wanted them to look at each problem and check to see if the student got the right answer.  Then it was their job to decide what the student did wrong.  I asked them, "What would you say to this student if you were the teacher and were planning a conference with them?  What would you tell them they need to work on so they get better at solving math problems?"  It was so fun to watch them carefully check each problem and discuss with their partners what they noticed.  

You wouldn't believe the conversations they were having!  

They caught the mistakes right away!  

I didn't need to teach a thing.  

I walked around and listened to them as they discovered the errors.

When they were finished, I put a copy under the document camera, and my students shared out.  They came to the screen with a pointer and explained that in the first sample the student forgot to look at the symbol and check to see if it's addition or subtraction.  They had added and it was a subtraction problem.  They also noticed that in the second example the student didn't count correctly.  They had drawn 14 circles, and yet the number sentence told them that 13 is the number to start with.  

Woo Hoo!  

We created an anchor chart for their observations.  I should have taken a picture of it, but I totally forgot!  Now if they will only remember these things when we take the summative assessment!  According to the rubric for this assessment, the students have to get all of the problems correct to be on level.  Whew!  That's tough, because we all make mistakes once in awhile.  

When we were finished they were talking among themselves and saying, "This must be work from some Kindergartners."  Tee Hee!  

No, my sweet First Graders.  This was samples of your work.  

Let's make it better for the summative assessment!