Fractions, Decimals, & Percents

Mr. Clark, a 7th grade teacher, is preparing to begin a new school year. He knows that fractions, decimals, and percents make up a
large portion of the 4th - 6th grade curriculum, and wants to see how much his incoming 7th graders understand about ordering and
comparing rational numbers. Therefore, he decides to give his students the following OGAP item because it doesn’t seem too
intimidating for students at the beginning of the year and he hopes it will provide him with some useful baseline information.

P(M): 22
1. Solve this problem in as many ways
as you can, including ways in which
you think Mr. Clark’s students might
Trevor ordered the following numbers from smallest to largest. Is Trevor solve this problem.
correct? Why or why not?

Trevor’s Order 2. What mathematics concepts might

.8 9% .55 students need to understand to solve
this problem?

3. Review Grade Expectation M_:2 from grade 3 to grade 8. At what grade are students expected to be able to solve this problem?

version 4
July 2006
The Vermont Mathematics Partnership is funded by a grant provided by the US Department of Education
(Award Number S366A020002) and the National Science Foundation (Award Number EHR-0227057)
The following pieces of student work from Mr. Clark’s class were selected because they represent the range of responses seen in his
classroom.

Review each of the following pieces of student work. For each piece:

• determine whether the student answered the question correctly or incorrectly

• analyze the strategy used

Student 1 Student 2

version 4
July 2006
The Vermont Mathematics Partnership is funded by a grant provided by the US Department of Education
(Award Number S366A020002) and the National Science Foundation (Award Number EHR-0227057)
Student 3 Student 4

Student 5 Student 6

version 4
July 2006
The Vermont Mathematics Partnership is funded by a grant provided by the US Department of Education
(Award Number S366A020002) and the National Science Foundation (Award Number EHR-0227057)
Student 7 Student 8

Student 9 Student 10

version 4
July 2006
The Vermont Mathematics Partnership is funded by a grant provided by the US Department of Education
(Award Number S366A020002) and the National Science Foundation (Award Number EHR-0227057)
Student 11 Student 12

version 4
July 2006
The Vermont Mathematics Partnership is funded by a grant provided by the US Department of Education
(Award Number S366A020002) and the National Science Foundation (Award Number EHR-0227057)
After reviewing the student work respond to the following questions:

What types of errors and/or misconceptions did you see in the collection of student work?

If you were Mr. Clark, how would this information impact your instructional plans for the beginning of the year?

In the next online session you will be asked to use this OGAP item with your students without any pre-teaching, to analyze the results,
and then discuss the results on the discussion board.

Note: In a pilot of 267 6th-8th grade students, 81 solved this problem correctly while 186 solved it incorrectly.

version 4
July 2006
The Vermont Mathematics Partnership is funded by a grant provided by the US Department of Education
(Award Number S366A020002) and the National Science Foundation (Award Number EHR-0227057)