math test items Archives - Mathematics for Teaching

Assessing understanding of mathematics can also be done by asking students to write test items. Here’s my favorite assessment item. I gave this to a group of teachers.

Possible answers/ questions.

Year level: Third year (Year 9)

Question 1 – What is the distance of P from the origin?

Question 2 – What is the area of circle P with radius equal to its distance from the origin?

Question 3 – With P as one of the vertex, draw square with area 2 square units.

Year level: Second year (Year 8 )

Question 1 – Write the equation of the line that passes through P and the origin.

Question 2 – Write 3 equations of lines passing through (2,1).

Question 3 – Write the equation of the family of lines passing through (2,1).

Year level: First year (Year 7)

Question 1 – What is the ordinate of point P?

Question 2 – Locate (-2, 1). How far is it from P?

Question 3 – Draw a square PQRS with area 9 square units. What are the coordinates of that square?

How about using this exercise to assess your students? Ask them to construct test items instead of asking them to answer questions.

Here are a few more assessment items which I constructed based on the TIMSS Framework:

TIMSS (Trends in international Math and Science Study) classifies test items in terms of cognitive domains namely, Knowing facts, procedures, concepts; Applying the facts, procedures and concepts usually in a routine problem solving task; and, Reasoning. Click here for detailed descriptions of each.

In my earlier post about this topic on using the TIMSS Assessment Framework for constructing test items I presented a set of questions about zeros of cubic polynomial function. Here are three more test items about graphs of rational function based on the framework. Note that questions should be independent of each other, that is, an answer in one item should not serve as clue to the other items. I only used the same rational function here to highlight the differences among the cognitive domains – knowing, applying, reasoning.

Knowing

What may be the equation of the graph below?

Applying

The graph above the x-axis is function f and the graph below the x-axis is function g. Which of the following equations describes the relationships between f and g?

a. g(x) = f(-x) b. g(x) = f^-1(x) c. g(x) = f^-1(-x) d. g(x) = -f(x) e. g(x) = /f(x)/

Reasoning

Carlo drew the figure below by graphing two functions on the same coordinate axes. The graph on the left is f(x) = 4/x². Which of the following function is represented by the other graph on the right (the blue one)?

a. $g(x)=\frac {4}{x^2}$ b. $g(x)=4+\frac {4}{x^2}$ c. $g(x)=\frac {4}{(x-2)^2}$ d. $g(x)=\frac {4}{(x-4)^2}$ e. $g(x)=\frac {4}{(x+4)^2}$