All four of my Algebra 1 classes, totaling 57 students, took this pretest. None of the classes knew they were taking a pretest so none of the students were able to prepare for it.
Question 1: About 50% of student responses dealt with exponents being used to represent repeated multiplication. Question 2: Almost all students correctly stated that 5 to the power of 3 represented (5)(5)(5) or 125. About 25% of students stated that the exponent of 3 meant how many fives you were multiplying together. Many students did not answer the second question. Question 3: No students correctly or fully simplified any of the expressions. About 75% of students attempted to multiply out all of the exponents in parts A and C rather than simplifying first. Less than 10% of students wrote out the exponents in parts B and D as repeated multiplication. Question 4: All students agreed with Jenny and disagreed with Brian. Only about 30% of students also agreed with Kyle. Many students liked the concrete example Jenny gave. |
Brian's PreTest
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Jeff's Pretest
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