: Introduction

Fifteen of the assessment tasks presented students with information to be displayed in a graph or table and instructions for preparing the graph or table. In some cases, much of the graph or table was provided, and the student was to incorporate the additional information. In other cases, a framework was provided, but students were asked to add data, axis labels or value labels.

Four tasks were completely or largely the same for year 4 and year 8 students. One of these is a link task (to be used again in 1999), and the other three are released tasks (fully described here). Four tasks, including one link task, were attempted only by year 8 students. The remaining seven tasks, including two link tasks, were attempted only by year 4 students.

Fourteen tasks were presented in the stations format, where four students worked around a series of task stations, supervised and assisted where appropriate by a teacher. The last task was presented to students in the one-to-one interview format, with each student working individually with a teacher and their interactions videotaped.

This Chapter presents the assessment results in the following order:

Each released task occupies one or more pages. The information provided includes the graph, table or map to be interpreted, the task instructions and questions, correct answers, and a table showing the percentages of students getting each question or task component correct. Some tasks also include a brief commentary on interesting features of the results. One task, which produced particularly interesting responses from year 4 students, is accompanied by two pages of examples of their responses.

Each link task occupies one quarter of a page. A broad indication is given of the nature of the task, and a table is provided showing the percentages of students getting each question or task component correct.

Results Averaged across all components of tasks completed by both year 4 and year 8 students, 85 percent of year 8 students produced correct responses, while 53 percent of year 4 students produced correct responses.

Some tasks involved skills which would not yet have been formally taught to year 4 students. This helps to account for the large performance differences between year 4 and year 8 students.

Students at both levels were least successful in providing appropriate labels for axes and values, seeming to believe that it was sufficient to display the data. Further emphasis in teaching programmes on the importance of appropriate labels may be desirable.