Benchmarks

I gave a Benchmark A at the beginning of the school year, Benchmark B in January and just gave Benchmark C.  I like to give it at the beginning of the final exam review period so we can dipstick where we stand.

Benchmark C in Accelerated Algebra 2 only had 9 questions on it, but it gave me an idea about the students' strengths and weaknesses.  We had two big units this term - conics and everything trig - right triangle trig, graphing trig, trig inverse, and trig identities. 

It is great to see 100% of the class get things correct:
-Writing a conic in standard form by completing the square - although they told me they didn't remember how to do it.  They just deduced it.
-Given a graph, write the equation for cosine.
-Find B from the graph of sine.
-Solving using Law of sines.

So, we knew our strengths.  And, there were no glaring weaknesses!  The rest of the questions got 89% right or 96% right. 

My Accelerated Algebra 2 class is a mix of sophomores and juniors, so the spring is really affected by both our state testing, MCAS, for English, Math, and Science, and by AP testing for the juniors.  It is a lot to work around.  We had Memorial Day followed by two days of the state testing in Biology, so I knew we had to wrap up our trig unit by then.  I am glad we did.  It gave us time to practice in class and review for the final exam.  We had a class to play breakout which was an all-year review.  While the sophomores were testing, my juniors got to play a CSI trig review around the room.  Then, we had a day when they took the benchmark, took the student survey, and we went over what was going to be on the final exam.  That left 3 days for actual review.  We did a powerpoint with questions in it as a class on whiteboards.  They would do the problem, hold it up and show me and we would discuss them.  We did a day of 6 quizlet live review games, so fun.  And, then a day of worksheets, just plug along. 

They are taking their final now.  I hope they are doing well.