IA #1

We had our first IA this year, and I'm proud to have written the exam, and I'm proud to have taught these students. Although the grades are lower than last year, the mastery in most topics is actually higher, and it is only the new reading portion at the end that brought the grades down. Since I'm very busy (less so than last week, but there are last-minute preparations for tomorrow's field trip to the American Museum of Natural History), I'll paste a piece of the formal assessment reflection that I had to do.

Things I learned about writing a critical reading portion of an assessment:

What misunderstandings are revealed in the data?

There was huge variation in results between the 6 questions, which will be addressed separately. A lot of the questions were poorly written, which contributed to some “unfair” questions.

A: Question A had strong mastery compared to the other reading questions (68%). It asked students to infer that the crust was being described in a quotation that described very little thickness and habitability. Students who answered correctly either cited the thickness or the habitability. Most students who answered incorrectly cited the line, “one half the thickness of…”, but saw the word ”thickness” and assumed it was referring to the thickest layer, either the mantle or outer core (depending on which source was used).

B: Question B had the highest mastery – most students were able to identify which was the thickest layer. The biggest source of error is that the question asked students to answer “According to the first picture,” but it wasn’t clear exactly where they were supposed to look. Many students answered according to the table, which gave a completely different answer – and is actually a more challenging question. Had the table not been there, or if the question more clearly directed students to the diagram of the layers of the Earth, mastery might have been higher.

C: Low mastery – 42%. Most of the wrong answers were C, showing that students were only looking at the “Top” column, not realizing that the “top” and “bottom” columns were referring to the same variable, and could be compared. Students needed to take 13.1 from the bottom of the inner core and subtract 2.2 from the top of the crust. Instead, most students used 12.8 from the top of the inner core, choosing answer C.

D, F: These questions had the lowest mastery (31% and 23%), but I believe they are bad questions. Question D is a mistake – in a previous version of the reading, the quotation was in an extra paragraph, but I removed the paragraph in the interest in making the reading shorter. The quotation was actually not in the reading at all, so the only context the students had was the word “indirect”. Additionally, even if the paragraph had been included, the paragraph doesn’t give good context clues. Although it would have helped, I don’t think it would have been a fair question anyway. Question F required knowledge of the definition “indirect evidence”. Most students answered with the results of indirect evidence (specific details of the core’s composition).

E (36%): This question asked students to add up the different layers on the table. Students had difficulty reading the table, and question were all over the place. Some students showed in their answer that they chose the layer closest to 890 km thickness, rather than adding up previous layers.

What gaps in the instruction of the standard contributed to these misunderstandings?

Reading activities haven’t been process-based. Lessons have mostly been about what IS the correct answer, not HOW it was found. As a result, students have practice copying correct answers, but not following a process to find it themselves.

What will you do to help students achieve mastery?

§  Reteach “deep reading” (interpreting a phrase or sentence that doesn’t necessarily make sense right away)

§  Practice staircase readings more often – 2-3 times per week, with more detailed process discussion

§  Include non-standard graphs and tables as practice, with real-life data related to course content, and practice analyzing quantitative and qualitative data

So, I learned a few interesting things, and I can't wait to improve them for next time.

I got some good running in this weekend (6 on Saturday and 1.5 on Sunday), but I lost my softball game. Tim and I have been enjoying our myriad of engagement gifts with such activities as: cheese-eating on a new slate board with new cheese knives; drinking wine out of new stemless wine glasses; eating a T-Bone with our new steak knives; and more!