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Welcome to the "Now what? Student-Level Data Analysis" Asynchronous Module.
You will work through this module by scrolling through this learning space. To expand documents and slide decks that are included, you can click on the gray arrow at the top right corner of each item.
Feel free to focus on the pieces of this module that are most relevant to your topics of interest.
Please complete the Exit Ticket at the end of the module. We will use your submission to track completion.
Please contact datafellows@eddirection.org if help is needed.
Click on the button to the left to open the note-catcher, which is mirrored to follow the content as it is presented on the Learning Space. As you navigate through this module, you are welcome to use this optional tool to capture your notes.
Refer to your note-catcher each time you see this icon.
Session Outcome: This asynchronous module will focus on how to analyze student-level data.
Success Criteria: More specifically, Data Fellows will be able to:
Utilize a student work analysis protocol to lead data discussions on the RSSP team and move data forward
Turn around information in this module for teacher training at a later date (if desired).
Anticipated time to complete this module: 75 minutes
Introduction
Introduction
Now that we are starting to get consistent student achievement data in our dashboards, the logical next question becomes: now what?
Data is only as good as the action you take on it. It's important to have a quick turnaround time for data analysis so teachers can move quickly to plan for reteaching of the most-missed standards and close gaps in their classrooms. While we want to ask ourselves if the data is timely so we can act quickly upon it, we also want to confirm that it’s relevant and normed.
Relevant data in an educational setting simply means ensuring we are assessing the standards that we want it to assess in a rigorous way (more on this later when we discuss unpacking standards and objectives).
Normed data refers to a common assessment that all teachers across the district give to students that is graded in a way that is standardized. This way, you are able to ensure an “apples to apples” comparison in terms of the data. Note: if giving students an open-ended style assessment, not only should there be a rubric to help with norming, but whoever is scoring the assessment (likely teachers) should go through a norming process as well.
If the data your team is assessing are not relevant or normed, this is a critical starting point.
If your district initiative involves utilization of high quality instructional materials like Amplify, Eureka, etc., the first step is to make sure that teachers are using the resources provided to them to assess student mastery of the content. Because units can vary wildly by grade level and content in terms of length, your district may want to consider collecting data points at regular intervals to ensure consistency. This can look like:
Providing students with a STAAR-aligned formative assessment every two weeks that is based on the TEKS taught in the unit
This may require significant support from a district curriculum/assessment team to ensure the assessments are written, submitted, administered, and collected in time
Consider exploring TEA's Texas Formative Assessment Resource. TFAR is an optional tool that is available at no cost to districts and open-enrollment charter schools and is not tied to accountability. TFAR is meant to supplement and support existing district resources and formative assessment practices.
Pulling an exit ticket directly from the curriculum at a regular interval to norm across the district
Ensure that there is a rubric that all teachers use for open-ended responses
Recognize that additional professional learning may be necessary in order for teachers to be normed on scoring processes for the rubric (this can take place during PLC time)
Part I: Student Work Protocol
Part I: Student Work Protocol
In this section, we are going to take you step-by-step through a protocol to analyze student work in order to determine the gap in student understanding and plan a path forward. We will be using a sixth grade reading assessment to guide our understanding of this. Please note that any time you analyze student work, it requires significant content knowledge and expertise to be able to unpack standards and determine the success criteria (more on what this looks like later). Leverage content experts, coaches, curriculum managers, and all resources available to you during the pre-work phase to make your analysis as robust and accurate as possible.
What: A student work protocol is a set of steps teachers and leaders can take to dive into student work. This helps the teachers and leaders determine the root causes of students' misunderstanding so that way they can plan for reteaching missed objectives in the future. Note: this can be done with open-ended responses or multiple choice questions.
Why: When we analyze student work, we can use that information to differentiate, remediate, and/or accelerate student understanding. Having a clear process to analyze student work is critical to drawing strong conclusions from the data and planning next steps.
How: Start by gathering student work and the teacher exemplar. The exemplar should include annotations, correct responses, and complete sentences for open-ended responses.
Open up the protocol linked to the right and use it as a guide through the next part of this module. We will provide you with a step-by-step example of what this protocol looks like in action.
Note: this protocol can be used to analyze multiple choice or open-ended responses.
Protocol Pre-Work:
Identify lowest-performing readiness standard(s) for analysis.
Have available the standard you'll be analyzing, unpacked into what students should know and be able to do to demonstrate mastery of that standard.
Ensure alignment between the standard and the assessment.
Create your own exemplar of student work.
Gather student work samples (this can be the full stack of student work from a class period or a sample of 3 high-performing students, 3 mid-performing students, and 3 low-performing students depending on the assessment and time you have ahead of the meeting to prepare).
Identifying Lowest-Performing Readiness Standard(s) for Analysis
If you are using an exit ticket or short assessment that only assesses one or two standards, then this step is not necessary. However, if you are analyzing a longer assessment with multiple standards, you will want to first start by identifying the lowest-performing standards.
We recommend focusing on Readiness TEKS since they are the most heavily tested standards. This lead4ward resource is helpful when unpacking the standards. You can use the "Scaffold" resources to see what students should have learned in previous years.
If you don't already have the lead4ward resources bookmarked, do so now! They are linked to the right for your convenience.
Unpacking the Standard
To unpack the standard, you will want to have the lead4ward document available, as well as any relevant curriculum to help you interpret the standard. The most simple and straight-forward way to unpack the standard is to divide the standard into two columns: what students should know and what students should be able to do.
Know: On the left-hand side of a t-chart, list the knowledge that students need to master the objective. You should also include the conceptual understanding here -- that is, the comprehensive knowledge that the students will take with them after the lesson. Another way to see this is to consider all of the nouns in the standard as the knowledge.
Do: On the right-hand side of a t-chart, list the skills that students need to master the objective. This can be listed in steps that students need to take in order to master that standard. When in doubt, we find it helpful to imagine yourself as the learner and ask yourself "what steps do I need to take in order to complete this standard?" Another way to see this is to consider all of the verbs in the standard as the skills.
The image below shows an example of an unpacked standard from 6th grade ELA.
Ensuring Alignment Between Standard and Assessment
The next step in the pre-work is to ensure there is alignment between the standard and the assessment; if it's not aligned well to the standard, it's not worth going through the work to unpack the standard or analyze it because whatever next steps are generated will likely not lead to an increased understanding for students.
Ideally, this step should happen before the assessment is administered, but it's always a good idea to double check the assessment questions just in case there is a gap here. It could lead your team to a frustrating situation if you spend time analyzing the standard and the student work to come to the conclusion, in the end, that the assessment question(s) were not aligned to the standard.
In an assessment created by TEA, this step is more straightforward. The answer key should come with a list of standards that were assessed in each question. If the assessment is district-created, we recommend that you compare the assessment questions to released STAAR questions (or any other state or national assessment that is relevant to your district's context) to ensure they are assessed in a similar way.
Gathering Work Samples
There are two ways to do this. If you have a short assessment like an exit ticket that you are analyzing, you can bring the full stack of student work to the meeting. If you are analyzing a longer assessment, you'll want to go through them before and select a selection of student work samples.
We recommend gathering 3 high-performing students' work, 3 mid-performing, and 3 lower-performing. For our example, we have only included one of each, but when this analysis was done, we had three to ensure we were picking out trends.
Now that the pre-work is complete, we are ready to dive into the protocol. Follow along step-by-step on your note-catcher to see the examples along with the protocol.
Step 1: Unpack the Exemplar
What do students need to know and be able to do in order to master this objective? What did I, as the teacher, do?
I used text evidence to support my inference.
I annotated the text using text annotation strategies I taught in class.
I annotated text features, such as the picture and the title.
Step 2: Sort the Work
What trends do I see? Which errors are most common based on the success criteria that I outlined in Step 1?
Students are missing text feature annotations.
Students' annotations are surface level and only pick out a few words for each paragraph.
There is no text evidence to support the inference.
Step 3: Identify the What and Prioritize
Which errors are the priorities to respond to according to the data? What will move my students further faster?
There is no text evidence to support the inference.
Step 4: Identify the Why
What is the root cause of this error? What conceptual understanding is missing?
An inference is supported by text evidence -- it is not just reliant on the reader's previous knowledge.
Step 5: Make a Plan
What is my plan to teach this information in a different way? Will I use a model? Who needs the reteach (whole-class, small-group)? When will I be able to reteach this standard?
Use a model so I can emphasize my thinking as a reader and the questions I ask myself while annotating the text.
I will reteach this whole-class.
I will reteach this standard before the next assessment since I know it is assessed again then.
Part II: Review vs. Reteach
Part II: Review vs. Reteach
Now that you've analyzed the student work and determined the gap, it's time to develop a plan for reteaching that standard to ensure student mastery.
Review: you'll want to review standards that students have already mastered to ensure the information sticks long-term. This can look like spiraling TEKS in to a "Do Now" or "Bell Ringer" in class. The reason we want to choose standards that students have already mastered is because bell ringers should require no pre-teach or reminders (except perhaps an anchor chart that was created when the standard was initially taught) before students engage with the material.
Re-teach: you'll want to re-teach standards that students have not mastered yet through either a model or a guided discourse.
Rule of Thumb:
If 80% or more students mastered the standard, review that standard
If 50%-79% of students mastered the standard, reteach that standard using a guided discourse
If fewer than 50% of the students mastered the standard, reteach that standard using a model
Re-Teach: Guided Discourse
A guided discourse is the best course of action when at least 50% of your students mastered the standard because you can leverage their understanding to support the learning of the rest of the class. If fewer than 50% of your students mastered the standard, it won't work as well because there won't be enough students to call on to explain the correct answer.
Watch the video below from Uncommon Schools of a teacher leading his students through a guided discourse. As you watch, consider:
What steps does the teacher take to leverage student understanding?
How does the teacher leverage students in the classroom to guide them to understanding the correct answer?
Guided Discourse - Get_Better_Faster_Clip_32.m4vWhat are the key teacher moves?
What are the key teacher moves?
Teacher posts the two common answers on chart paper for all students to see (the correct answer and the most common misconception)
Asks: which one do you agree with (Option 1 or Option 2); instructs students to turn and talk
Polls class to see who agrees with Option 1 or Option 2
Calls on one student to explain why Option 2 is correct
Calls on another student to explain why Option 1 is incorrect
Teacher Questioning Strategies
Teacher Questioning Strategies
Sometimes, we get into the habit of asking students questions like "Who chose Option 1? Why? Who chose Option 2? Why?" Doing this puts the incorrect thinking into the classroom.
The teacher in this video asked students two very targeted questions: "Why is Option 2 correct? Why is Option 1 incorrect?" Doing this ensures only the correct thinking is voiced in the classroom and leads to less confusion.
Why do you think a guided discourse reteach would be less effective with fewer students at mastery?
Why do you think a guided discourse reteach would be less effective with fewer students at mastery?
Since a guided discourse relies on a turn and talk, some students need to have been successful on mastering this standard or getting this question correct.
Re-Teach: Model
A teacher model is an effective strategy to use when less than half of the class mastered the objective because it puts only the teacher's thinking into the classroom and ensures students can replicate the steps the teacher takes in order to practice a skill. Watch the video below of another Uncommon Schools teacher leading his students through a model of how to annotate a prompt in an AP US History classroom.
Annotating the Prompt.m4vWhat are the key teacher moves?
What are the key teacher moves?
Teacher is asking himself questions about the prompt
Teacher is drawing on his prior knowledge in order to answer the prompt
Teacher is not asking students their perspective or answering their questions (this is intentional)
Provides students with a tool to assist their response of the question (a T-Chart)
Asks students to turn and talk about the steps he took during his model (not the content that he wrote down)
What are students doing during the model?
What are students doing during the model?
Students are taking notes on their paper not about the content - but about the thinking. They are writing down the questions the teacher asks himself and what he does. This way, they can replicate that thinking on their own.
What do you think the teacher will have students do next to practice?
What do you think the teacher will have students do next to practice?
You might think the teacher would have students write the essay -- or at least start writing the essay -- as a next step. Instead, this teacher gives students a second prompt to analyze and break apart. Why? So students have an immediate opportunity to practice the targeted skill (analyzing and breaking down a prompt) that the teacher retaught.
Part III: Conclusion and Next Steps
Part III: Conclusion and Next Steps
Now that we have seen what can be done with the data we are collecting to impact student outcomes, it's time to chart the path forward. Depending on your district's size, current comfortability with analyzing student-level data, and bandwidth given the holidays, there are a couple of different options for next steps coming out of this module.
1
Lead a student work analysis protocol with your RSSP team. Ask a teacher or school leader from a focus campus to send you a class set of responses from an exit ticket, or use the data from a formative assessment to analyze. Lead your team through the protocol to get a feel for it and then consider presenting it at one of your focus campuses at a PLC.
2
Take the information in this module and create a professional learning opportunity for your teachers and leaders to be delivered after the holiday break. Ask teachers to bring student samples and lead them through the protocol. Feel free to use the videos and reflection questions as part of your professional learning experience and have teachers plan a model or guided discourse as part of the training.
Module Complete!
Module Complete!
Congratulations on completing the module. Please complete the Exit Ticket form by clicking on the link above. We will use the information you submit to track your completion.
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