Historical Data and Item Analysis
Linked at the bottom of the page is the historical data for Byron's Accelerated Algebra 2 / Trig course. The data prior to the 2011-2012 school year was created by my coaches, Troy Faulkner and Rob Warneke. I added many of the Fall 2011 and all of the Spring 2012 test results after I began teaching the course. The spreadsheet is broken into tabs for each unit test. Each problem includes the percent of students who answered it correctly. If students received partial credit, this is reflected in the overall percentage. I use the historical data to determine which areas of a unit need further innovation or extra focus before teaching a new group of students. I also use the data after teaching to identify what I did well and what I did poorly that contributed to the overall results, allowing me to make more general changes before the next unit.
December 2nd, 2011 Reflection on Data Mining in Action
This was a horrible week, but it ended on a positive note. Data hurts sometimes.
In Algebra 2, this was the first unit where I built my own curriculum – I built a guided notes packet designed around all of the content that students needed to learn, broken down into specific sections, with videos and other online resources for each section. The curriculum was highly aligned from assignments to quiz to test. The notes packet had built-in areas for students to reflect on their quizzes next to the sections they struggled with – and they were using it. I was positive they would all rock their test. Except they didn’t – it was ugly. Historically, Troy’s data showed that this was a tough chapter. However, my results came in worse at all levels. I don’t know where I wanted to direct my anger, but it is really frustrating to work your butt off and not get results. After a day or two of reflecting on the mistake kids made and having some good chats with Troy, I realized that breaking everything down into specific examples helped to teach the topics, but not when to use them in a mixed review environment like the test. In addition, a survey of students after the test revealed to me (for the first time after making videos all unit long) that 14 of 15 kids that took the survey thought my videos were too long – thus they were self-editing and fast-forwarding, missing a lot of the instruction I intended for them. Finally, they simply were not getting enough practice – I allowed students to complete problems for a topic “until they got it”, which only took one or two. Practicing until they mastered it, however, took much longer than I asked of them. Learning from Rob, who got horrible test results after a unit he put a lot of effort into, I spent some time combing through the per-question data results of the test. I did better in a few areas compared to Troy, but struggled with the division and subtraction of rational expressions (my longest videos – ranging 13-17 minutes each). They also struggled on review topics, something that I didn’t build into my new focused assignments.
Because of the way I built this unit, I have very direct feedback both from students and from test data that correlate to parts of my lesson. Since the videos and sections are all broken up into their smallest parts, it will be easy to go back and revise a few videos and practice problems without rebuilding everything. I may be a bit optimistic, but I am convinced that with a few targeted improvements I could get scores that finish well above Troy’s next semester J. In addition, I applied many of the higher level lessons from my 8/9 unit to my new chapter 10 unit, also built in the same general format. Hopefully these changes will pay off in results – we shall see.
In Stats, I have been struggling with a group of seniors who are growing increasing frustrated with the course. The main targets of their frustration are the quizzes, which in my opinion, are not great assessments and are poorly aligned to homework. I also had a hard time taking over the classroom instruction – I had a poor understanding of the topic (having never learned many of these topics until now), and Rob’s classroom instruction came mostly from his own notes and deep understanding of statistics, which has been much harder to borrow than Troy’s Algebra 2 notes. Thus, kids had a hard time understanding what I was talking about, and even when they understood me and the homework, they struggled on the chapter quiz. This week’s quiz was the worst of all with nearly half of the class below 80%, the math department’s mark for proficiency (these results came the day after the disappointing Algebra 2 test results). I knew something had to change, but I didn’t have any specific ideas. I was also barely sleeping 5-6 hours/night with all the extra work preparing videos and the new notes packets for Algebra 2, so I had no extra time and energy for creativity with Stats.
On Friday afternoon, the day after their rough quiz, I had all the students push the desks aside and circle up on the floor, kindergarten style, in the center of the room. I started out with a brief introduction that conveyed that I was frustrated and that I knew they were frustrated too. I asked students to go around the room and say what was frustrating them the most with the class, being as specific as possible. We rotated through the circle and students had the option to pass if they chose. Though we broke into short interactive discussions as people shared, they were very good about letting one person speak at a time before moving along the circle. I was nervous about doing this – I had no idea how they would respond – but I was confident that treating a group of hard working seniors like adults and listening to the collective group would help bridge the trust that was rapidly falling apart each week.
As expected, many students brought up the quizzes, but in particular mentioned that they worked hard on the homework only to continually feel stupid after every quiz. The poor alignment of homework → quiz → test came up a lot. A few talked about a lack of direct instruction that I provided. I know I had been putting a lot of effort into making an interesting and helpful introduction/hook into the chapters through my lectures, but reflecting back now, see that it did little to help them with the skills needed to do the homework (I just created one more piece of unaligned curriculum to add to the mix). Some students specifically asked for more traditional instruction – lecturing with notes and calling on students for answers – or even using the SMART responders as an interactive gauge to make sure everyone was getting it, not just a few of the louder students who volunteer answers. Students also asked for more points in the grade book to show their understanding outside of the quizzes and tests. I used this as an opportunity to push them towards projects, something I was excited about, but something I was afraid they wouldn’t be willing to work hard on or take as seriously. Getting them to ask for projects helped my case.
Over the weekend, some timely inspiration from a night of DDR (dance dance revolution, that video game with the dance step pads) with my wife helped me figure out the project I could have them do to review the core material of the last 5 chapters. I spent the weekend working hard on the details of the project, and though much of it is still coming together, I finally feel confident in my plan moving forward with the class.
This was probably my roughest week of the year – little sleep, low scores in all classes, and little idea of how to fix things until the very end of the week when I could finally sleep Friday night feeling a lot more optimistic about the weeks to come.