OLNA diagnostics and group diagnostics are found in SIRS and assist in identifying parts of the course that students don't understand well. I've spent the last week collating data for my class and identifying what needs to be learned.
The main ideas so far have been in Money/Percentages and Proportion:
Money, Proportion and Percentages (Number topics)
Profit/Loss: Percentage increase decrease
Discount/Markup: Percentages of amounts
Finding quantities in an amount: Multiplication / Partitioning
Providing change: The difference in two amounts / Subtraction
Changing quantities in a recipe
Pie charts
This has been consistent over many years of teaching that these concepts are poorly understood. With the increased understanding of how to teach Linear Algebra among teachers through the efforts of Pam Sherrard, proportion and specifically percentages are the new frontier.
There were some other topics: Volume, Elapsed Time but Percentages and Money topics comprised the majority of issues faced by students, particularly when calculators are not allowed to be used.
Something to consider as we design the new programmes, particularly in the lower ability classes.
The biggest tip so far is not to learn rote methods without context.
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