As a student candidate at West Virginia State University, I have acquired a comprehensive understanding of various assessments, how to apply them in my instruction and how to obtain the data I need to improve desirable outcomes for my students. This comes from creating clear and precise objectives for the data I want to collect that are measurable to show students' growth. I have provided several examples to solidify my evidence and demonstrate my knowledge of using assessments to set instructional outcomes that meet grade-level standards. For my proof, I have provided the unit plan for "Variation of Traits," My final objective is, "By the end of the unit, the students will use evidence to support the explanation that the environment can influence traits and that some traits are inherited. Upon completing the unit plan, the students will strive to achieve 79% accuracy on the TMA evaluations." Also, a bar graph displaying the data from my Teacher Made Assessment (TMA) pre and post-data from scores taken by my students assessments. I have also included all my grades from the "Variations of Traits" Unit Plan and "Patterns of Nature" EDUC 423 formative assessment spanning my time in Residency One, a grade book that I kept with the records of the student's progress with the scores. I am also providing students' work as evidence of the growth from learning using my formative assessments to make changes to my lessons that created better outcomes for my summative TMA final assessment.

 

Looking at the lesson plan and unit framework first, these are my indicators of stating what I had intended to teach and assess in this lesson with student objectives to be met and what those goals are. I want to go through those by the lesson day and each expected objective:

1. By the end of the lesson, the students will learn to analyze and interpret data to provide evidence that plants and animals have traits inherited from parents and that variation of these traits exists in a group of similar organisms. Students will strive to achieve 64% accuracy on the TMA Pre Assessment, expecting 9 out of 14 on the TMA working towards mastery.

2. By the end of the lesson, the students will learn to analyze and interpret data (Similarities and differences) to provide evidence that plants and animals have traits inherited from parents and that variation of these traits exists in a group of similar organisms. Students will use small group discussions and problem-solving to obtain learning goals as we aspire to master the concept. Students will create 4 out of 6 examples for 66% proficiency in the Similarities and Differences Formative Assessment.

3. By the end of the unit, the students will use evidence to support the explanation that the environment can influence traits and that some traits are inherited. Upon completing the unit plan, the students will strive to achieve 79% accuracy on the TMA evaluations.

Did I meet all those objectives? Not all of them, but I certainly met the last two to show progress in growth over this lesson, which is evidence of learning that has occurred! Let's look at my grade book now: the data from which I formulated data-driven decision-making based on what I observed during the lesson in my formative assessments of the class and my assessment feedback. The TMA pre-assessment was difficult for students to understand; even now, when I go back to reread it, the questions are more challenging to understand than what is expected of a third-grader. I based my assessment questions on the standard, using language from within the standard, which was my fault. It doesn't mean it was a failure; for one, students were introduced to higher-level words, and I corrected how I could word the questions by the post-assessment. If the students can not comprehend the words, they can not get the answers correctly. The Pre-Assessment results showed a 50.3% proficiency in the content material before teaching the unit plan. The difficulties I had included the text-to-speech not working, student comprehension issues with the words, and technology issues with one student with a dead iPad.

 

How did I make changes to create the desired outcomes using my formative assessments and my data? Well, the scores alone from the Pre-Assessment showed the data that many of the students knew certain aspects of my unit plan, which I was planning to teach, and they understood one definition; I did not have to spend as much time with that vocabulary word as I did with the rest because 80% of the class knew this questions before I taught the lesson. The pre-assessment showed me that the students needed the opportunity to give more examples and more time to write when asking students to use this skill set. By Day Two, I had worked longer in discussion with the words of the vocabulary they needed the most help with and gave them multiple examples and opportunities to come up with examples of Similarities and Differences in my formative assessment, which I had posted the student's results here as well. Students outperformed my expectation objective for the day, and the class scored 75% on this assignment.

 

For Day Three, I was also able to use this data. This trend was an excellent example of what worked, so I implemented the interactive activity game "Slap it!" This game gave students various examples, and they had to apply comprehension and rationale to which category the trait they observed would go into. The game had great results once the behavioral issues were handled, and the results showed an engagement that the students seemed to enjoy. The TMA post-assessment would show the results of the accumulation of the unit plan and the proficiency towards mastery that my student obtained after each learning activity and meeting the new objectives for the unit plan. I had initially expected the students to score an 11 out of 14, a 79% accuracy towards mastery. Still, the students, in actuality, scored 11.6 out of 14 for an 82% accuracy towards mastery, proving to me that the formative assessments, the pre-assessment and the adjustments had helped me to obtain above the desired outcome I initially sought for my students.