Dramatic Academic Growth

Ultimately, one of my main jobs as a teacher is to foster academic growth. Since my students come from a historically disenfranchised community, their academic achievement is an important path to success outside of school. From an equity perspective, these students deserve to be performing just as well on average as they would at a high income school. Third grade is a pivotal year for student learning, and as their teacher, I have to make sure my students are making as much growth as possible to be successful for years to come. To make sure they are on track, I need to be constantly collecting data to analyze their progress, where they are doing well, and where they need extra help. This allows me to focus my teaching and tailor instruction to their specific needs.

I will be highlighting both quantitative and qualitative data. For quantitative data, I will be showcasing the students' DIBELS oral reading fluency scores as well as their iReady testing scores. These scores provide a standardized benchmark that track growth, and give a clear picture of where they stand compared to students across the nation. However, these scores do not always give a full picture of the student. A student may struggle with the format of these tests, get anxious, or simply have a bad experience. This is why I will also be using short answer writing samples as qualitative data. These allow students to show what they know in a less restrictive measure and allows me to see growth that may not appear in their quantitative scores. It is also closer to what students are expected to do in real life, and so can give me a clear picture of how they might perform outside of class. 

Quantitative data provides a standardized and measurable way for teachers to understand their students' skills. Although it does not show a perfect image, it does allow me to put some distance between myself and the data. Quantitative data allows me to simply look at the numbers and take in what I need to improve upon in the big picture as opposed to getting bogged down in reasons as to why as student did poorly or not. I can also better understand where my students stand in the context of their larger community outside of the class or even the school. When working with qualitative data and a deep knowledge of my students, quantitative data is a valuable tool to help me evaluate and fine-tune my instruction.

My students take the Dynamic Indicators of Basic Early Literacy Skills (DIBELS) tests throughout the year. This assesses students' literacy skills in isolation. For example, their ability to decode words, read a passage, and understand what they are reading are all tested separately. Students take beginning year, mid-year, and end of year diagnostics in each. Additionally, students use monthly DIBELS progress monitoring to measure their growth in oral reading fluency. Overall, this provides a measurable account of what students can do in terms of their reading skills. In our targeted reading period, we focus on improving their skills, and as their skills improve so will their scores. More information about DIBELS can be found here.

Class-level reports are essential to guiding my teaching and tracking student progress. It can show me trends in student learning, both positive and negative. If I see that the majority of my students are making growth, I know I can continue using the methods I have been using. If I see a group of outliers, I can analyze what might be special about their cases, and adjust my teaching to better fit their specific needs. For example, if I see that my group who do not show growth tend to be struggling with decoding, I will be sure to group them and target decoding in isolation. This will help me make sure I am reaching all students. If I see that a majority of my students are not making progress, that is a signal to me that I need to make a more significant change in my teaching. Overall, the trends I see when I use class-level reports are what help me decide what and how exactly I should be teaching my students.

The graph above shows the progress of every child in my class who was present at the end of the year. There are a few who came in part of the way through the year, as evidenced by their single or two points of data instead of the typical three. For those who were a part of our class from the beginning, the blue dot indicates their initial score in August, the pink square indicates their mid-year score in December, and the green diamond represents their score at the end of the year in May. One student has all triangles, which indicates that her scores were so high that they could not be graphed in these graph bounds. Ideally we want to see an upwards trajectory in every student. A long vertical line is what every student is aiming for.

Additionally, we would like as many students as possible to be in or above the area shaded gray, as this is where students who are on grade level score. Overall, I am proud of how many of the students did have a long upwards trajectory. Many of them actually moved levels- from "red" to "yellow", "yellow" to "green", or "green" to "blue". This means that they are getting closer and closer to being on grade level, which is our ultimate goal. I am also happy to see that all of my students except one continued to make gains after their mid-year assessment, meaning that they continued to grow and did not regress at all.

However, in some of my students I did see less growth than I would have liked. This does not shock me, as they tend to start out on a very low level. The ORF passages they read are at a third-grade level, so their low initial level in some ways works against their growth. They may make growth, but if the text is still above their level, they will not be able to showcase their progress in this specific test. Many of these students are also on an IEP and have reading goals, so to have a clearer view of their progress, we would have to examine their IEP progress monitoring data. Nonetheless I am happy to see that they did grow, even when using a metric that does not set them up for success. 

Finally, some of my students simply were not in my class for long enough for me to make an impact. For example, the fifth student from the left, though he has two scores, joined our class at the start of our fourth quarter, where we spend much more time assessing than teaching. This meant that he did not get as much time as the rest of the students to receive targeted reading instruction and improve his skills. 

This data gives me a more numerical version of what the previous graph shows me. For example, I can see the levels that the students were in at the beginning of the year. I am happy to see that multiple students increased their color levels, and am particularly impressed with my one student who started at a "yellow" level, and ended at the "blue" level. 

Additionally, the months of growth indicated in the right column helped me get a clearer picture of how much students grew. Because I teach a very transient population, many of my students did not receive a DIBELS ORF score from me at both the beginning and the end of the year. This means that data is missing from those students' reports, and DIBELS cannot tell me how many months they grew. 

However, I am happy to see the number of students who did make significant growth. We are only in school for 10 months out of the year. Thus, making 10 months of growth indicates that a student made a school year's worth of growth. Over half of my students who had enourgh data did make at least one school year's worth of growth, if not more. This is crucial for helping these students achieve or stay at grade-appropriate reading levels. 

This student came to us already a fairly strong reader when she came to third grade. However, her growth was not quite linear. She does have a stable guardian and family she has been living with for several years. However, she did have to be placed in this guardian's home due to her birth parents being unable to care for her. In October, she did receive some upsetting news about her birth parents, which quite strongly affected her. This is evidence by her October progress monitoring score being lower than the August and September scores. However, she was able to recover. Her growth steadily trended upwards, except for a dip in February that was seen across the grade level due to the passage being of a higher lexile level than normal. Ultimately, even with the struggle at the beginning of the year, she was able to meet her goals and exceed the grade level scores by May, as evidenced by the final dot being above the area shaded in gray.

This student struggled much more with reading. He is an ELL student, and lives with his parents who do not fluently speak English. He had been working with the ELL teacher for many years, but third grade was when he made dramatic growth. He also struggled in about October but recovered. Notably, he struggled heavily with managing his emotions during the Spring. He would become quite withdrawn and even shut down when he was redirected. His work also suffered, as he would become more easily overwhelmed. However, slowly over time, he came slightly more out of his shell. He worked with a counselor to self-regulate, and was able to get more work accomplished. Eventually, he did recover and ultimately finished the year at a third grade reading level, as evidenced by the diamond and dot below it being solidly in the gray shaded area.

This student showed excellent growth throughout the year. She started out slightly below grade level which is not ideal, but not overly concerning. However, she truly pushed herself very hard throughout the year. She came to school consistently, always read outside of school, and applied herself in class. Beyond this, we placed her in an intervention group that was slightly higher than her original level in order to push her. This ended up paying off because her scores grew very steadily. She ended up reading above a third grade level, as evidenced by her final data point being above the gray shaded area.

Although it is not the whole picture, my quantitative data is a valuable tool to show me where my students stand, what their needs are, and how they improved over time. Throughout the year, the main purpose of me reviewing this data is for me to get a clear idea of where students stand with their reading skills. Though we read with them every day, having numerical evidence of their skill can help me adjust instruction in order to help push them towards meeting their goals. At the end of the year, looking at their academic growth in numbers can help me improve my craft for the next class of students. Of course, this is not a perfect metric, since external circumstances, or even just the difference in material between each progress monitoring test can affect a student's score. However, the overview it provides is incredibly helpful to make sure my students are staying on track and that I am teaching in a way that bests supports their needs.

Qualitative data is a valuable piece of data that helps complete the picture of who the students are as learners. It may not be quite as measurable or clear cut as quantitative data, but qualitative data can sometimes show growth that may not be visible in a simple standardized test. Especially with my inclusion class, having qualitative data can truly emphasize their learning. For example, a student may not be able to read and write, but they can explain certain literary concepts. Their responses that are dictated to me show that they are able to identify theme and use text evidence, even if their reading tests show that they have not improved. Thus, I need to look at a combination of qualitative and quantitative data to fully understand my students.

My students take ELA assessments every few weeks that require students to read a text, and then answer questions about the text. But the most important part for the teacher is that they write responses to prompts. The students are expected to identify a literary element of the text such as theme or character perspective and use text evidence to support their answers. However, many of my students face factors that might prohibit them from answering the questions. For example, if they are not able to read or write, they cannot access the material. To mitigate this and isolate the skill we are assessing, students have the option to have the text read to them, and can dictate their answers. This allows them to show their learning and for us to assess their growth without other skills getting in the way.

To show their qualitative growth, I chose to use three students' short answer responses from the first time they were assessed in August to their most recent assessment in November. In each assessment, the students read a text or have had a text read to them. They answer some multiple choice questions, and then are asked a short answer question about the literary element that was covered in the unit. They are required to respond in a full sentence or more, depending on their answer.

In the first assessment, the students read a story called Singing Out about a girl named Nina who learns to sing in public. The literary element we studied in that unit was character perspective. Students were asked to answer two separate short answer questions. The first was how Nina felt at the beginning of the story, the second was how she felt at the end. This assessment was administered on paper, as it was a format the students were familiar with from previous years. 

In the second assessment, the students read a story called Waiting for a Friend about a girl named Crystal who waits all summer for her friend Priya to watch a new movie they were both eager to see. The literary element we studied during the unit was theme. Students were only asked one short answer question about what the theme of the story was. This assessment was administered digitally, a relatively new element for the students. Transferring to typing is a big transition for students who are still new to using a keyboard, but is necessary as we slowly start to prepare them for the statewide standardized test they will take in the spring.

Beginning of Year Score: 7/12

Middle of Year Score: 6/6

In the first assessment, this student was able to accurately identify the way Nina feels at the beginning of the story, but at the end, he said she felt "happy". This was not completely inaccurate, which is why I gave him two points out of three, but I was looking for an adjective such as "proud" or "confident". However, he did not use any text evidence to explain how he knew how she felt. We do not require students to use quotes directly from the text, but they should be able to identify which points in the story told them how they felt, which he did not indicate. 

In the second assessment, the computer keyboard did not pose as many issues as I expected to his spelling or syntax. However, he struggled to build sentences when he had multiple elements to his responses. He used sentence stems like "The theme is..." and "I know this because...", but reversed what was supposed to follow each stem. For example, the theme that he identified was the idea of waiting, but he did so following the sentence stem "I know this because..." I also see text evidence when he mentioned that she waited all summer, but it was placed after the sentence stem "The theme is...". Nonetheless, because he was able to pull all the pieces together, I can give him full marks. Moving forward we will practice putting our thoughts in the correct order, and making our sentences more coherent. By the end of the year, I should be able to easily understand which sentence identifies the literary element, and which sentence identifies the text evidence.

Beginning of Year Score: 7/12

Middle of Year Score: 7/6

In the first assessment, this student had a very easy time building sentences when she was working on paper. She was able to identify that Nina was not just sad, she was nervous. She could not find the word "satisfied" when she was describing Nina's feelings at the end of the story, so I could not give her full points. Most importantly, she did not add any text evidence to either response. This severely brought down her scores.

In the second assessment, I can tell that she was very focused on finding text evidence, because most of what she wrote was describing important pieces of the story. The details she described were important to finding the theme, so I was able to award her a bonus point for finding extra pieces of text evidence. She also was able to identify that the theme was to be loyal to one's friends. However, she needs to work on narrowing down and organizing her ideas. Right now, her responses are mostly stream of thought. Even though she has all the appropriate components, her next steps are to figure out which pieces of text evidence she should use and to organize her sentences to create a better flow. These will create a clearer response.

Beginning of Year Score: 7/12

Middle of Year Score: 6/6

In the initial assessment, this student felt very clear about how to craft a response. She identified Nina's original feeling accurately but fell into the same trap as the other students with Nina's final feeling. She also did not incorporate any text evidence, which meant that I could not award her enough points.

In the mid-year assessment, she was able to keep the coherent organizational structure of her response, something that was difficult for the other students. She also clearly indicated what the theme was and what text evidence supported it. This is not to say that her response was perfect. Typing on a keyboard was quite a struggle for her, as evidenced by her spelling and capitalization errors. Moving forward, she will need to practice looking for and correcting convention errors. She also can begin to pull in multiple pieces of text evidence, and perhaps even use actual quotes from the text.

These assignments provide a general indication of the growth my whole class has shown between August and November. For example, almost none of my students originally came to third grade knowing how to use text evidence to support their answer. However, they did have some understanding of how to build a short answer response, as shown by their use of full sentences. Between the first and the final assessment, we focused heavily on pulling evidence as justification for our opinions on a text. All the students make attempts to use the text evidence, but many still struggle with organizing the pieces of their response, such as Student 1 and Student 2, but they will continue to make growth as we practice in the second half of the year. Performing these assessments is crucial to my teaching, as it helps me understand what skills the students need to focus on. For example, after the first assessment, I spent much time practicing finding text evidence to support a response. After the most recent assessment, I have plans to focus on building a response structure in order to help the students organize their thoughts. Overall, using qualitative data can show me how they are doing and their growth, even if it is not always seen in the quantitative data.

Ultimately, one of the most important parts of my job is to make sure that my students are academically growing and achieving. Many of them come to me at a disadvantage, already being somewhat behind where we want them to be at the start of third grade. Using both quantitative and qualitative data is crucial to making sure that I am getting the students to where they need to be. I can use numerical data to gain a baseline, and then my qualitative data to track their skills that are not reflected in a test. Most importantly, both are necessary for helping guide my instruction. Throughout the program I have collected both qualitative and quantitative data. I have practiced analyzing it, and made choices about what to focus on next. This has helped me focus on specific skills that were relevant to my students instead of trying to do a bit of all the skills. Moving forward, I want to practice incorporating more details into my rubrics. Even though the skill we assess as a grade level team is not syntax or organization, these are still vital skills, and having a place to track them can help me understand what is necessary to refine my instructions in these areas as well.