Dramatic Academic Growth
Dramatic Academic Growth
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Introduction
Introduction
Dramatic academic growth is acheived through strategic instruction which is informed through research-based, data-informed teaching methods. Throughout my experience as an educator, I have analyzed the growth of my students through both qualitative and quantitative means to assess student growth over time and paint a holistic picture of each learner, their strengths, areas of need, and specific learning targets which are both set and achieved by the students themselves. reflects the gains made by learners through high-impact, targeted teaching methods. Academic growth can be viewed both quantitatively and qualitatively. I believe that using a combination of both types of assessment is the best way to assess student growth over time.
In this section, I will explore how using iReady Math Diagnostic Assessment as quantitative data has given me deeper insights into the performance, learning needs, and strengths of each of my students and has informed the quality of instruction that I execute in my classroom each and every day. Furthermore, I will explore the value of using qualitative data through the form of student constructed responses through our Achievement Network assessments and how it has provided students with a clear way to express their ideas, knowledge, and conceptual understanding of the unit exploration topics in both History and ELA class.
In the sections that follow, I will demonstrate how using quantitative and qualitative data to measure student growth reflects the impact of high-quality instruction on children's academic performance over time. I will also consider how my instructional decisions were based, in part, on these qualitative and quantitative measures and informed the specific interventions, acceleration plans, and scaffolds present in my day-to-day instruction for the students I have served over the last eight years.
Quantitative
Quantitative
Overview of the iReady Diagnostic
Overview of the iReady Diagnostic
The iReady Diagnostic is an adaptive, computer-based assessment for students in grades K-12. The assessment is administered three times a year during the beginning, middle, and end of the typical school year. This asessment provides educators with insight into student strengths, needs, and targeted tools for instruction which can be used to move students according to their specific academic needs. Furthermore, this diagnostic provides educators with a robust look into student performance and growth over time by measuring students against their expected yearly growth goals and stretch growth goals, which are informed by prior year's testing data. After completion of a diagnostic, students are provided with a personalized, differentiated online instruction plan which addresses their specific skill and standards-based needs to ensure that they are actively working on content daily which strengthens their areas of concern over time.
iready-understanding-student-performance-math-2019.pdfiReady Diagnostic Sample Items
iReady Diagnostic Sample Items
The document below includes some sample test items that students may encounter during their adaptive assessment to determine their just-right level of current knowledge. At the end of the assessment, students are provided targeted instruction which addresses their areas of academic struggle aligned to similar test items they missed on the diagnostic. On the teacher side, I am also provided with a document which aligns to each student item called the Tools for Instruction. This document provides me with a scripted small group lesson which aligns to the skill the student is working on during their independent lesson time, digital manipulatives, graphic organizers, example problems, and scaffolds and supports to support English Language learners and students with disabilities. I regularly refer to the tools for instruction items when designing small group instruction for students to address common areas of struggle and take ongoing notes on the students' progress throughout the duration of the lesson, the misconceptions present in the student's work, and what specific tool or strategy the student utilized during the small group session to engage in productive struggle and make progress towards standards mastery of the topic. Thisallows me to collect ongoing data in a small group format while also providing students with similar question types, instructional strategies, and the opportunity to use technology enhanced items on a daily basis during class time.
i-Ready Diagnostic Sample Items-Student Version.pdfiReady Diagnostic Data Analysis
iReady Diagnostic Data Analysis
In order to conduct a comprehensive data analysis, I first begin by examining each student's individual performance against each mathematical domain. By using the comprehensive Diagnostic Results view in iReady, I am able to quickly identify each student's overall mathematics placement, their specific placement level by domain, and learn what their annual growth and stretch growth targets are for the school year. As seen in the reporting below for the 2020-2021 SY, overall, 4 students, or 11% of students are currently on or above grade level after the pandemic, 11 students, or 29% of students are one grade level below, and 23 students, or 61% of students are two or more grade levels below grade level mastery expectations. This is helpful when informing my unit planning and targeted small group structures supports because it allows me to anticipate student needs, areas of struggle, and can allow me to perform a vertical standards progression within a particular mathematics domain to identify possible misconceptions and lost learning from prior school years which may be negatively impacting students' ability to perform these same tasks at grade level.
When this macro-level view is targeted by domain, 22 students are performing 2 or more years below grade level in the domain of Number and Operations, 11 students are one grade level below and 5 students are currently on or above grade level in this specific domain. In the domain of Algebra & Algebraic Thinking, 19 students are currently performing two or more years below grade level, 15 students are performing one year below grade level and 4 students are performing at or above grade level. In the domain of Measurement & Data, 18 students are performing 2 or more years below grade level, 14 students are performing one year below grade level, and 6 students are performing on or above grade level. Finally, in the domain of Geometry, 26 students are performing two or more years below grade level, 10 students are performing one year below grade level, and 2 students are performing on or above grade level.
Analyzing the data at the domain view allows me to quickly identify students who may need significant supports and scaffolds which can be addressed through vertical standards progression accommodations or guided math support interventions as well as students who are already proficient in this domain who may benefit from content acceleration during this particular unit of study to ensure that they are engaging in productive struggle at their just-right instructional level in class.
diagnostic-results_math__11092021.pdfDramatic Student Growth -- Class & Student Level
Dramatic Student Growth -- Class & Student Level
Below, I have included my students' iReady Math data from the beginning and end of the 2018-2019 school year. When I compared the beginning of year data from September to the end of year semester data from November 2021, I observed that my class’ average scores improved from 1.25 average to 2.75 average for an overall average score growth of 1.5 points. The data below from beginning-of-year (BOY) to end-of-year (EOY) demonstrate that my scholars made significant academic growth over the course of the year. The median percent progress towards Typical Growth for this cohort of 5th grade math students is 139%. Typical growth is the average annual growth for a student in the fifth grade with the same placement level at the beginning of the year. According to the Progress Distributions graph, 34 students met their annual growth goal target and 19 students met their stretch growth goal target.
BOY data indicate that the overall mathematics skill of this 5th grade cohort was low, with approximately 1/3 of students performing two or more years below grade level at the begining of the year and another 1/3 of students performing one year below grade level at the same time at the begining of the year. By the end of the year, only 3 students (6%) were still performing two or more years below grade level compared to 26% of students who were performing two or more years below grade level at the begining of the year. Likewise, by the end of the year, 20 students (43%) were performing one year or less below grade level compared to 60% of students who were performing one year or less below grade level at the begining of the year. Finally, 21 students (45%) ended the school year at or above grade level compared with only 15% of students who were proficient at the begining of the year.
Furthermore, when the data is analyzed at the student level, the argument that dramatic student growth was achieved is made even more apparent. Consider Student A (the first student to appear) on the Diagnostic Growth tracker below. At the beginning of the school year, this student had an initial placement of Grade 1 and a scale score of 399. By the end of the school year, this same student had a mathematics placement of Mid-Grade 5 with a scale score of 503. The student achieved 520% of their annual growth goal and 254% of their annual stretch goal, surpassing even the expectations of the diagnostic given their initial placement and scale score on the first diagnostic assessment. As a result of my instruction, this student was promoted to middle school without needs of significant academic support services in place to accommodate their learning in the general education setting. When we consider the impact of dramatic academic growth on the lives of Black and Brown children and their future life opportunities, the importance of exceeding growth expectations in the elementary classroom cannot be emphasized enough.
Overall, my students made dramatic academic growth and were able to greatly deepen their understanding of mathematics, improve their proficiency beyond expectations, and walked away with concrete skills which would promote their future learning as mathematicians in middle school and beyond.
diagnostic-growth_math__06102019.pdfQualitative
Qualitative
Beginning of Year Writing Task
Beginning of Year Writing Task
As an ELA teacher, I find it critical to ensure that students have the ability to engage daily in writing. This helps to build their stamina, supports their organization of ideas, and also helps them to develop rich ideas and elaborate in further detail by synthesizing information which we've read in class and their own personal connections to the material and unit of study. This writing task was one of the first assignments given to my students at the beginning of the year during our first unit on Westward Expansion. I designed this assessment to measure my students' content knowledge ofn the topic and to assess their strengths and weaknesses in writing about more than one text.
By structuring the response as open-ended and allowing students to make multiple authentic connections of their own to the two readings, I allowed students the freedom to explore how they would combine the information gathered in each text to convey Stagecoach Mary's unique life and experiences as a pioneer Black postal worker during the time period of Westward Expansion. As a result, the students were able to provide me with meaningful qualitative data which helped me better understand their current writing levels and to plan instructional supports to strengthen their writing over time.
Writing Task 1.pdfEnd of Year Writing Task
End of Year Writing Task
In order to promote dramatic student growth in written expression, I led a small writer's appreciation moment at the begining of each class period. During this time, we would analyze beautifully constructed pieces of writing and students would discuss what made the writing so effective, using a PARCC constructed response rubric to help guide their language and ideas in the discussion. Each day, we would analyze a new aspect of how to improve our writing, such as developing hooks, how to dissect a writing prompt, how to properly cite textual evidence, proofreading and revising work for proper grammar and mechanics, and how to organize an essay into the core components.
By the end of the year during the May written task, students had grown considerably in their capacity to properly cite multiple text sources to develop an idea which was appropriate to task, their ability to support evidence with compelling reasoning which came directly from the text, and their ability to organize a multi-paragraph written response. As evidenced by the student samples in this task, it is very clear that students walked away with knowledge of how important structure was to the development of their writing and how writers express the connection of ideas between texts by citing evidence which came directly from the reading.
ELA May Writing Task 2021.pdfConclusion & Reflections
Conclusion & Reflections
In conclusion, it is abundantly clear that in order to make dramatic academic gains in the classroom with students, teachers must be proficient in how to gather data about their student's current academic levels, how to analyze both quantitative and qualitative student data measures to ensure a holistic viewing of the student's needs, and how to plan for effective instruction based on the data analysis. It is only when teachers use data to inform their instruction that they are able to make significant student gains and impact the lives of the children they teach in concrete, meaningful ways.
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