Impact Study

Impact Study

              During my internship I conducted an Impact Study, studying the results of my unit on Lowis Lowry's novel Number the Stars.

Demographic Profile

            The school community of Battlefield Middle School is fairly diverse. There are a total of 795 students attending this school. Of these students 53.58% of the students are White, 21.64% are Black, 15.35% are Hispanic, 3.77% are Asian, 0.25% are Indian, 0.25% are Hawaiian, and 5.16% are two or more races. These numbers for the school are pretty fair representations of the students in my classroom, though I feel as if my classes are a bit more racially diverse than some of these smaller numbers show.

            This school also has a diverse economic population. Of the students who attend BMS 40.63% are labeled ECD, economically disadvantaged. These are the students who qualify for free and reduced lunch.  Of the students who are labeled ECD, 22% are White, 44% are Black, 40% are Hispanic, 16.6% are Asian, and 40% are of non-categorized or mixed races. There are also twelve BMS students who are currently homeless. On the other end of the spectrum, there are also many students who come from affluent middle class families. Unfortunately there is no current available percentage number for these students.

            BMS also has a fairly large community of students with disabilities (SWD).  85 BMS students are identified as SWD, making up 10.69% of the total population. I have five of these students in my sixth grade English inclusion class. Of the total population, students labeled as SWD who are White make up 5.1%, 2.9% are Black, 2.5% are Hispanic, 3.3% are Asian, and 2.2% are a non-categorized race. These percentages may appear slightly misleading though when only looking at the number because the percentage was taken from the total population of BMS students.  For example, it appears as though there are more Asian students with disabilities than Black students, which is not the case. This is because there are more total Black students than Asian students. As well as students labeled SWD, there are also some students who are labeled LEP. These students are English language learners. There are 43 LEP students at BMS, though none of these are in my classes. These students make up 5.41% of the total population.

            The students in my classes come from a variety of different economic, social, ethnic, and racial backgrounds.  I have many students who are economically disadvantaged and several students who have specific learning disabilities. Because of the diversity of my students, I try to differentiate my lessons and assessments in order to give everyone a chance to be successful.

Data Analysis:



In my charts I divide the data up by classes. The A2 class has a large SCOPE (gifted) cluster, though there are seven students who are not SCOPE and of these three of these perform very low academically and behaviorally.  This class achieved some of the highest overall scores, but also some of the lowest overall scores. I was very pleased with the performance of many of the SCOPE students. I expected that they would go the extra mile, and a few even exceeded my expectations. On the other hand, some of the SCOPE students produced disappointing results. Many did not turn the project in on time, even though there was a five point penalty for each day that the project was late. In fact, the A2 class had the highest number of students who did not turn in their work on time. Seven out of the twenty-two did not turn in their work on time, and of these six were SCOPE students. I was disappointed to see so many students underperforming. Of the SCOPE students who actually turned in the assignment on time, most earned A’s or high B’s. Still, I was disappointed though to see that there were a few who turned in very minimalistic work. Overall, about half of the SCOPE students performed to the level expected and half fell below the mark. While these results are a bit disappointing, they are not altogether unexpected. My MT and I have noticed a trend of underperforming with many of the SCOPE students. I believe that is because they grew accustomed to earning “easy A’s” in elementary school and have not yet learned that it will not be the same in middle school. Hopefully their results on the post-assessment will be a wake-up call for some of them.

The A3 class is a general education class. As a whole, this class performed very well. Most of the students earned A’s and B’s. There were only two C’s and one D.  The two C’s were both students who typically perform on the lower end. I am satisfied with their results, because I know that both of these students had to work hard to earn those C’s. The D was unexpected. The student who earned this grade performed well below her ability level. Because this was so unexpected, I returned the project to this student and gave her the opportunity to do the assignment over again in order to improve her grade.  Except for this one student, I was very pleased with the results of this class.

The A5 class is an inclusion class. There are five Special Ed. students in this class with specific learning disabilities in reading comprehension and written expression. Two require the number 14 accommodation--tests must be read aloud to them. Both of these students also struggle extremely with written expression. Though these two students struggle the most with written expression, they are a bit better with reading comprehension than the other three. As a whole, I was very impressed with the results of the Special Ed. students.  Three of these students earned A’s.  I want to emphasize the word “earned” because these students truly went above and beyond. These students whose writing is normally jam packed with errors turned in nearly grammatically flawless projects and they demonstrated a thorough understanding of the novel. I must say that I was more impressed with these students than with many of the SCOPE students.  It was evident that these students really put in time and effort into their projects. This pattern rang true with the rest of the class as well. Some of the students who are usually at the top of the class performed below their skill level, while a few of the lower performing students really impressed me with their hard work. One student in particular, who normally performs at the lower end, put a lot of effort into her work and even included more than what the project required. Unfortunately, her project was riddled with grammatical errors (she typically struggles in this area) and she was missing one essential requirement. Though I really wanted to give this student an A, the rubric would not allow it. Because I wanted to give this student the grade that she deserved for the effort that she put in, I allowed her to add the section that she was missing to her project and this bumped her up to an A.  It was the most rewarding experience for me to see the expressions on the students’ faces when I told these struggling students that their hard work had paid off and that they had earned an A.

It was interesting to see the trends among the classes. There was a surprising trend of higher level students underachieving and lower level students overachieving. I think that part of this is simply the struggle of getting accustomed to middle school. Many of the higher level students are used to doing well without having to put in much effort, and they have not yet learned that they will have to try a bit harder to do well in middle school. Whereas, some of the lower level students are used to struggling and working hard to earn their grades, so they know that they will have to spend time and put in a lot of effort to achieve the grades that they want. For those students who did not do as well as they hoped, I think that this will be a lesson in the importance of hard work.

Overall, I feel as though the Impact Unit was a success. Many students proved that they had a good understanding of the novel as well as the different Story Elements and the skill of summarizing. All of the students showed a progression from the beginning to the end. This is particularly apparent when looking at the summarizing graph. Each of the lines shows a steady incline, save for the slight dip at Summary 4 (this was because Summary 4 was the first complete summary of the whole novel, and it was a more difficult task).  Some students did perform lower than desired in the unit, of course. I think that the best way to help these students would be to allow more class time to work on the essential skills, including the final project. I could also give these students the opportunity to make some corrections to their projects. In fact, I have already done so with quite a few students.

  

Reflection:

What worked well?

·   The pre-reading activities that I created giving background information about the time period really worked effectively to hook the students into the novel. These also gave the students necessary background information. The students needed to know about WWII and the Holocaust in order to understand the significance of the novel.

·   Having the students complete reading response questions while reading gave the students something to focus on in each chapter. This help to direct the students toward the details that I wanted them to take from each chapter. Giving the students focus questions also helped with summarization.

·   Working on summarization to improve reading comprehension worked really well. I was able to see clearly how the students comprehended the novel, and I was able to monitor their progress and understanding.

·   By repeatedly introducing the skill of summarization in new ways I was able to reinforce the material and reach students with differing learning styles. I modeled each of these methods and then had the students follow suit. This worked very well. I saw that they students steadily improved on summarization and with their comprehension of the text throughout the unit.

What did not work well?

·   Because we were reading the novel in class, all of the students were at different places at different times. Some students finished much earlier or later than other students. I would like to be able to send books home with students. I realize that this depends on the resources that the school has available, but I feel like it would make a difference if all of the students had a book at home to work with.

·   The Double Entry notes were difficult for many students. Some students struggled with the concept of writing a detail from the text in one column and explaining its importance in the other. Most students did not keep up with these notes as they read. I think that some of these students struggled with the multitasking of reading and taking notes at the same time, while others simply needed a little more prompting and reminding.

·   I could also have explained more clearly that the students should choose a project not only based on their interests but what they have available. Some students struggled with the time constraints because they were attempting to complete a Power Point when they did not have a computer at home. I think that a lot of these students wanted to do what was “cool” and did not really consider how they were going to get their project done. In the future I will explain this a bit better.

What have I learned, and what will I do in the future?

·  I learned that it is really important to cover, cover, and recover any important material. Reinforcing the same material in different ways is very important.

·   Students finish at different rates. It is important to allow time for the slower students and to have sponge activities for the quicker students.

· If I teach another novel that the students must read in class, I will assign specific chapters to be read each day and try to keep all of the students at the same place in the novel. It becomes difficult to manage when everyone is in different places.