◆ 151We must bring a different type of intentionality and focus to assessing
students’ word problem skills and strategies, if we want them to get
better at it.Problem solving is one of the top two difficulties that students have in
schools. Fluency is the other. If we could conquer those two mountains,
we would be able to move student achievement forward by great leaps.
If we are really concerned about these things, we must track them. If we
track them, then we have a better handle on them. We know where to
start and where to go.
At the beginning of the year, in every grade you should give a word
problem test. This test should assess students’ problem-solving skills from
the grades before. In the middle of the year, the test should be repeated
with the on-grade level problems. At the end of the year, the test should
be given again, this time testing all of the problems that were supposed
to be mastered in that grade. This information is vital if you want to
improve problem solving in your class, school and district. With this
information, it is possible to look at data by individual, within the class,
across the grade, across the school and across the district. Then it is impor-
tant to think about where are the problems? Why are they there? How
often do the students get to practice these types of problems? Let’s take
a deeper dive into this.
Here is an example of some of a 3rd grade Beginning of the Year
Benchmark (see Figures 11.1, 11.2 and 11.3). Since it is a beginning of the
year test, these are second-grade problems. The point is to see if there are
any gaps in second-grade problem solving before we dive head first into
third-grade problem solving. Notice that the students are required to
represent their thinking with drawings and diagrams.