A week of perfection and then bombing a quiz???

[stampin'teacher]

My fourth graders have been thoroughly impressing me with their math facts and use of division for the past week. As my first year at this school, I was so shocked to see how much further behind these kids were in math than I expected. I'm talking a reteach of basic addition/subtraction at the beginning of the year. We touched on long division earlier and it has been brought up again along with other division strategies (gotta love Everday Math...). Anyway, I stressed to them to use any method they feel comfortable with, and in class they have been able to consistently answer division questions, convert a remainder to a fraction, interpret a remainder for a word problem, etc.

Well, they took a short quiz on all the same topics (every single question was actually from their homework or class work) and the majority of the kids bombed!!

What am I missing here?

[teacherwithlove]

Ugh- this has happened to me a few times as well.

I don't know what to tell you due to lack of experience (First year teacher) but I've tried other forms of assessment to actually measure what they've learned.

I'm sorry

[wanting2teach]

Perhaps text/quiz anxiety? Maybe making it clear to them that this is simply to make sure that they know the facts before you try to teach them something else would help them not stress about it?

Also, I agree with teacherwithlove in that another form of assessment may be necessary at this point. Sometimes this just happens.

[mopar]

It could be that during class they had some prompts from you or other students on how to work the problems or they used something that is displayed.

[orangetea]

In class, did they had examples to look at for the problems?

[stampin'teacher]

I have the steps written on the board (DMSBR) for them to use, and we have practice before without them. I am revamping my plans for the week and re-teaching after going over the quizzes.

What bugs me is that this group has struggled ALL year with basic problem solving, and using logic to find answers (Ex. does it make sense that 486/6 = 4,401??). No matter how many times we go through items, or how familiar they are with a concept, I guess test anxiety sets in like crazy! We ALWAYS talk about how it's no big deal, and how the quiz was for ME so I know what IIII still need to teach. They don't give any hint to being anxious or worried about

[amakaye]

One thing that has worked well with kiddos that struggle with reasonableness for me is telling them that they have to pay attention to their "reasonableness alarm." I occassionally make errors like that, and then make crazy beeping noises and talk about the flashing red alarm going off, and how I need to pay attention to catch those mistakes....