Site home page >> Triangle Area Page >>Test page >> this page || Comments on Pre-test (January 21, 2004)
There was a lot of variation in the amount of difference between the pre-test and the post-test. In some cases, the improvements were marked and quite impressive. In at least one case, there was virtually no change.
The most significnt general differences between the pre-test and the post-test appeared to be as follows:
1) Most of the post-test papers made some explicit comments about the meaning area, including a significant amount of discussion of the measuremnt of area using grids.
2) Many papers considered general traingles (not nesessarily right triangles) and discussed how the formula might be expalined or justified for such traingles. The relationship between the parallelogram area formula and the traingle area formula was mentioned frequently.
3) Students appear to have made different progress on synthesizing the material presented. Some papers included a coherent, systematic presentation of a deeply connected ideas, but some other papers mentioned assoretd topics without a coherent story binding them together, and a number of papers included errors on specific details.
It seems that students' attention has shifted somewhat, but that a comprehensive synthesis of the main conceptual ideas has ocurred for only a few students.
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