Assessment Profile

This profile deals with a student I started out just assessing but turned into me tutoring her because she was so far behind her classmates. I am proud to say progress was made, but she has potential left in her. Below is my "Assessment Profile":





Assessment Profile
• Student interview/discussion
The student I worked with in mathematics is Josette. She is a 5th grade student at Castlen Elementary. The thing she likes about school is Skunk, computers, class centers, Mrs. Roberts, and the library. She informed me she isn’t good at taking tests. Josette aspires to be a veterinarian when she grows up. At home, she doesn’t read but likes to go outside on the trampoline or the dirt pile. She has no wishes and said she goes to school so she can get a nice job one day. Josette tells me she has anger problems that she is trying to get over and rarely gets along with her younger brother and older sister. She does not have any friends at home and plays by herself. Her mom works late into the evening and Josette doesn’t go to bed until after she gets home.
When I begin to ask questions about math, she feels that she is very good in this subject, but she was clearly just saying that because she didn’t want to say she’s inept in math. The class was in the middle of working with factors of numbers, so I used this as the starting point. It became clear that Josette is struggling in many areas of math, such as grasping concepts like factors, and all the way down to struggling with multiplication tables and some subtraction. I decided to treat this student as someone I am tutoring, and went all the way back starting with working on subtraction, multiplication, and ultimately trying to get her on pace with the class with passing grades. As far as content area being addressed, I hope to address all because if something isn’t done immediately, Josette will always have trouble with math especially moving to middle school next year.
• Student performance/Strengths and Weaknesses
Josette’s performance was very unbalanced. That is because her attitudes and her focus usually determines how she performs when we are working together. There were days where she came in ready to learn, and days where she was unfocused and therefore, made little to no progress. She is a very capable student, and it was frustrating to see her do so well one meeting, and at the next meeting, we had to start all over in terms of getting her to focus.
We used flash cards to work with multiplication. I showed her methods on how multiplication is used in division. I worked on showing her how multiplication works. I used explanations that it was a faster way of adding up numbers, as well as modeling multiplication problems. We worked problems of division, and revisited finding factors. We also worked on probability with me talking her through problems until she was able to do them independently. We moved into fractions and she had trouble grasping concepts such as, “shade 3/5 of the blocks”. There would be more than 5 blocks there and this confused her. I assisted her in finding common denominators, and once we did a few of these problems, she had no trouble adding fractions with unlike denominators.
Josette’s strengths are that once you teach it to her thoroughly, she is able to retain the information. She improved at memorizing multiplication tables, working division problems, probability, and adding fractions with unlike denominators. When she is focused, she is able to think through problems and solve them.
Josette’s weaknesses are herself. She is fully capable of doing math. I believe when given time, she is very smart in math. Because she hasn’t had one-on-one intervention, she is somewhat slow to produce answers because she isn’t accustomed to consistently working out problems in her head. She does have trouble with problems such as shading 3/5 of an area that has more than 5 pieces to it.
• Conclusions/Recommendations
Based on many meetings with Josette, I think that there are outside factors that keeps her from staying on pace with her progress in math. She will shut down in class as far as working out problems orally with the class. She has a hard time focusing in class and one-on-one and I personally believe it has to do with her not practicing any at home, and not having the most stable home life. Having multiple meetings with Josette, she talked about her home life often, and I feel it has effect on when she comes to school. I feel like her inability to focus in class is related to this. Of course this isn’t the only factor, though, because I don’t know the entire situation. But when Josette is in the right environment, she is exceptional at math, and I had a great experience helping her progress.
As far as recommendations, she does not perform at her peak taking tests in the classroom, but when she is by herself, she is able to calm down and focus on math and not everything around her. I would recommend assistance such as I have been but on a scaled back approach. It needs to be enough that she understands what she is doing and able to work through the problems. A tutor, for instance, to help reinforce concepts learned.