Social Studies Data and Analysis
The pre-test and post-test that I gave to the students for social studies was on Women of Courage. I started the week's lesson by giving a home-made pre-test. While planning this lesson, I reviewed the women who we would read about and made my test based on that. The questions consisted of what the women were most famous for and a few questions on vocabulary words from the text. The post consisted of the same questions, but in a different order.
After giving the pre-test to the students, we started right in with the vocabulary attached to the chapter. Most students missed the vocabulary related questions on the pre-test, but were able to decode the words once shown with a picture representing the word. I feel more students would have been able to select the correct definition on the pre-test had I had the picture to match the word. Other than the vocabulary portion of the test, the students performed as well as I thought they would.
Chart 2.1 shows the student's pre and post test results. Most of the students showed growth, with the exception of six students, two of which remained the same. Of the students who decreased their score on the post test, two of them really surprised me. I knew Rocky would decrease because he was absent all days I gave the lesson and came back on the day of the post test. However, I wasn't expecting Alana and Lexie to do worst on the post test. They are two of the higher level students and normally retain material. Looking back over the lesson and analyzing the data, I think if I would have paced the material out over a longer period of time, maybe the few students who decreased would have had more time to retain the material and I would have been able to teach the lesson with more detail.
Although the results show some students decreased, I am still satisfied with the increase on the class average. Chart 2.2 shows the class' average increased from 71% to 76%. Even though I would have liked to see a higher increase, I am still happy with the 5% increase and will take this away as a great learning opportunity to allow a longer time span of retain factual information.