Rising Research Voices
Our Rising Research Voices series showcases the work of emerging talents within the E4 Center and beyond. Authored by junior staff and graduate students, these insightful research reports offer fresh perspectives and innovative approaches to current research topics.
By Asia Ellis, E4 Data Coordinator
Early math skills are a strong predictor of later academic achievement. As such, it is important to understand which math skills are most challenging for students, so instructors can offer more support and resources to help students master these skills. In this report, I provide an overview of math “sore spots” by diving into i-Ready math lesson data and exploring which problem categories featured in i-Ready math lessons result in the lowest mastery rates.
Key findings:
- While all grades struggled with the world/real world problem category, it seemed to be a common sore spot for older grades than for younger. Meanwhile, arithmetic tends to be a more common sore spot for younger students than for older.
- Unknown variables presented challenges to all grades represented.
- Although not in the top three most challenging categories, rounding/estimation stood out as a somewhat challenging category for second, fourth, and fifth graders; not so for kindergarten, first, and third grade.
- The time category had very few CCSS with which students struggled.
- Although not one of the top three most challenging categories, graphing did appear to present a challenge to some third graders. It did not appear among the most failed lessons for any other grades.