Carrie Claypool, a teacher in California, shared her idea for integrating i-Ready Standards Mastery assessments into small group work with her middle school math students. Carrie recently had seventh grade students complete Standards Mastery tests on two standards, from the Number Sense and Expression & Equations domains, in groups of four. “Students were required to be on the same problem, at the same time, and show all their work on scratch paper," Carrie explained. "My goals for this task were: 

• Learn and/or reinforce learning through collaboration 

• Learn an alternative solution method or math concept from peers 

I circulated the room as students worked. By circulating the room, I could listen to students’ explanations, thought processes, and mathematical arguments. This was a very successful learning activity as the average score was 79%, with 86% of students scoring Proficient.  I surveyed all my students for feedback on completing the test in groups. Most students felt they earned a higher score working together and would like to work cooperatively on Standards Mastery in the future.” 

Here are some of Carrie’s suggestions for questions to use with small groups, along with examples of her students’ responses:   

• “How did completing i-Ready Standards Mastery in your group help you on the test?” 
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  • “Completing i-Ready Standards Mastery in my group helped me a lot because they helped me when I got stuck in a certain problem and helped me understand the concept more.” —LR 
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  • “Yes, it did help working with the group, because you get to talk to other people and learn different ways to solve the problem.” —HP 
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  • “I feel it helped by having a less tense environment and being able to explain your thought process to a peer.” —AP 
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• “What math concept did you learn from completing i-Ready Standards Mastery tests with your group?”
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  • “I got better at multiplying decimals.” —ER
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  • “I learned how to change the temperature from Fahrenheit to Celsius.” —ED
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  • “The math concept that I learned was with a one-time payment and a payment per month or mile.” —JA 
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Consider Carrie’s small group strategy for using i-Ready Standards Mastery assessments to incorporate student discourse to help solidify student understanding. If you also need to assess each individual student’s understanding of your target standards and can do so without over-testing, use Form A for pair or small group work and assign Form B to individual students afterward. This strategy works well with middle school students, but it could be used with other grades as well. For more information about i-Ready Standards Mastery, please review the i-Ready Standards Mastery page on i-Ready Central.