Standard 10
learners demonstrate STEM literacy outcomes that prepare them for the next level of learning and work.
Paine Elementary students demonstrate STEM literacy outcomes that prepare them for the next level of learning and work. STEM teachers use performance assessment, formal assessment and student data to guide future instruction of all students, kindergarten through fifth grade. Our staff collaborates on a regular basis to discuss and analyze student data and to collaborate on designing lessons that align with the next steps as determined by the data.
A fourth graders demonstrates proficiency with the Engineering Design Process.
Fifth graders demonstrates growth with the planning phase of the Engineering Design Process.
STEM Lab Data Outcomes
Paine Elementary ensures that students are proficient with STEM outcomes by analyzing student data as a formative assessment tool to guide future instruction. STEM literacy and readiness is ingrained in the culture and assessment practices of our school through the use of our district-adopted Engineering Design Process (EDP). Every classroom in every grade level teaches this EDP process. These practices are also ingrained in the culture of our school through the integration of technology in all subject areas and grade levels. We are a 1:1 school with students who are very proficient with the use of technology. EnRICh is provided to every student in grades 2-5 and every classroom is reinforcing these assessment practices in their Intervention & Enrichment (IE) block each day.
STEM Lab Assessments:
A variety of performance and formative assessments are used in the STEM lab. We are working to improve our assessments and embed them into our curriculum units. Our district is developing plans for a district-wide STEM standards metric. To ensure that students are ready for the next level of work, we evaluate completed student work such as design prototypes, exit tickets, and student reflections. The STEM Specialists are consistently using observations of students in action and checking student understanding through questioning.
Additional student data is collected in Code.org, Typing Club, and through completed class assignments and projects in the lab. We also use Google Forms to collect student data. Through these data collection points we can see how students are progressing through our standards. We noticed that 43% of our 5th graders were interested in the STEM Type- DESIGNER from data collected on our survey. We also noticed that most 2nd graders mastered understanding of the lesson target after the performance assessment of our internet safety lessons. This will guide us in meeting students needs in the future as we become aware of individual strengths and interests of our students. Analyzing these data pieces, we've noticed that many students missed understanding various coding concepts such as function, events, and conditionals. We are specifically using this data to gauge student exposure and mastery of coding skills and computational thinking. We also used student data to celebrate successes and guide next level learning.
Data analysis has also revealed that pre-COVID, our students were stronger in many of our STEM skills and had more exposure to coding. Post-COVID we saw a lag/gap due to a year and a half of virtual teaching and learning, shifts in staffing due to shortage of substitutes, as well as changes to our specialists schedules where we began to serve more classes per-day with less time per block. Currently our data is showing improvements and students are making good progress in closing those gaps.
To help our students make connections to STEM learning and long term outcomes, career exploration is also embedded into our lessons. In order for students to buy into our lessons we use real world experiences related to real life careers related to the STEM field and use current events in the field as a motivating factor in our lessons.
We found it interesting that 43% of 5th graders chose the STEM Type- DESIGNER.
We believe that when students are excited about learning the learning outcomes naturally progress next level!
Not seeing anything above? Reauthenticate
Math ACAP Data 2021-2022 (2nd-5th Grade):
TCS Math curriculum guides and assessments
Paine Elementary ensures students are proficient with STEM outcomes by analyzing student data as a formative assessment tool to guide future instruction. Our teachers participate in regular data meetings to analyze and discuss outcomes and they collaborate on designing learning experiences that align to next steps as determined by the data. They explore opportunities for an integration of content and standards for more meaningful connections and application of concepts. The steps ensure a progression through the STEM curriculum and related disciplines. This is a continuous improvement process because data is always changing and new ideas are explored. This collaborative data analysis and design process ensures we are focused on the initiatives and experiences to ensure they are meaningful, ensuring future student success.
Development and refinement of our mathematics curriculum guides is an ongoing collaborative process. The initial creation was a result of our data analysis where we found that at the time approximately 80% of our students were above average in math (grades 3-5) and we were not seeing an adequate level of growth with the higher end students. Rather, the focus was more on the average student and the students with significant learning gaps. We determined we needed to provide math investigations with multiple entry points or access for ALL students and include enrichment as well as instructional supports for students in need. We had not found a curriculum that offered all of these things, so we proceeded to create our math curriculum guides. We initially implemented in 5th, 4th, then 3rd, which included extensive ongoing training for our teachers, co-teaching, academic coaching, etc. The math academic coach,on the design team, went back to the classroom for a year and taught this curriculum. This provided additional data on the tasks in the units for a more intense evaluation by the team. Due to the success of the math curriculum guides, we have expanded this initiative to 2nd grade and to 1st grade in 2022-2023.
Paine Elementary students engage in daily learning experiences designed to develop their STEM skills and competencies to ensure they will be workforce ready in the future. We have developed math curriculum guides for grades 1-5, and plan to work on Kindergarten for next year. Currently, math teachers are utilizing these curriculum guides for their core math instruction, for the instruction over approximately 1,100 students in grades 1-5. Our curriculum and instructional practices align with the expectation that students will collaborate to solve problems, use creative and innovative approaches, think at a critical, deep level, and communicate and defend their ideas and solutions. Students are provided opportunities to apply these skills through activities such as math investigations, number talks, mini-lessons, math workshop for application of skills, a culminating end of unit math menu providing choice problems, 3-Act tasks, etc.
Our annual summative assessment data in math as well as our formative assessment data in AimsWeb Plus reveals the growth of our students in the area of mathematics as a result of these efforts. When we analyze this data we do not only look at the current performance level of students, but we also look closely at the growth rate of each student to ensure all students are growing regardless of current proficiency levels. This redirects the teacher to exactly what each student needs to grow and this is incorporate in lesson design and small group planning. In grades 2-5 our summative data reveals the success of our math curriculum and instructional practices. The data from 2021-2022 is as follows: % of Students with Advanced Understanding: Paine-32%, District-21%, and State-8%. % of Students with Strong Understanding: Paine-44%, TCS-40%, and state-22%. % of Students with Partial Understanding: Paine-18%, District-31%, and State-42%. % of Students with Minimal Understanding: Paine-6%, District-8%, and State-28%. We are piloting these curriculum guides in first grade this year (12 classrooms). After our 1st grade team analyzed the mid-year math data last school year we determined we needed to do something else. We began the design of these guides with soft implementation the 2nd half of last year. We are in full-implementation this school year and the difference is our mid-year growth data affirms this is a movement in the right direction. The mid-year math data for 2021-2022 revealed average gains of 13 points compared to 12 points nationally, Our mid-year data for 2022-2023 reveals an average gain of 18 points compared to 12 points nationally. Last year 69% of our students grew at a higher level than the national average and this year it has increased to 82%. We will continue to monitor our data closely with this pilot.
Our math data from ACAP, AimsWeb, Grade Level Common Assessments, and Observations supports the continued use of our math curriculum guides. We will continue to evaluate and refine components of these guides as we participated in continued data analysis and explore additional learning experiences and instructional practices.
The development of our math curriculum guides as a result of data trends over the years has contributed to STEM skills and processes because it has helped to formulate a culture centered around data analysis, goal setting, lesson design, integration of ideas, etc. to ensure our students are growing and developing proficiency in all areas of STEM.
District STem literacy Plan
Going through this STEM Certification process, we have recognized that we need a formalized plan and metric for measuring student STEM literacy outcomes within the weekly STEM Lab class that our students attend. Our district is currently developing a district 3 year STEM strategic plan for STEM growth at all elementary schools in Trussville City Schools. The team developing this plan will be made up of district STEM teachers, elementary librarians, and district technology and STEM leaders, and one important component of this plan will be to develop a STEM literacy outcome metric.
To create this metric, we plan to examine our state Digital Literacy Computer Science standards, determine the critical standards for each grade level, and then create an assessment that students will take in each grade level at the beginning and end of each school year. We plan to do first implementation of this metric fall of the 2023-24 school year. After the spring implementation, we plan to examine our school data to help determine standard mastery and areas of growth for the next school year. This data will help guide changes to our curriculum in order to meet student needs.