EPSY 485

* NOTE: THIS ASSESSMENT IS THE FIRST TWO PAGES OF A 7 PAGE ASSESSMENT*

This assessment was given to a Sophomore English class at a high school. This was given to all
students in a Sophomore classes. The unit was from the students textbook and covered all the major
points of grammar. These students have spent the entire first half of the semester covering grammar. They
went over almost the entire textbook, apart from the information that was covering areas she did not have
to, such as handwriting. This assessment was given at the end of the unit and covered everything
discussed in class. This assessment was given to test how much students had learned about how to use
and understand basic grammar. There was no specific learning target or standards for the assessment, but
it seems as if the teacher was hoping that the students would have a good enough grasp of the grammar
covered so they could do well on the research paper that they will be assigned within the next few weeks.
The day after this assessment, the teacher would be covering the topics that many students have issues
with.
We noticed that most students seemed to grasp the idea of regular and irregular verbs. Most
students got a 100% on this issue, with the lowest grade being an 80%, which is still a B letter grade. The
students had a mixed result on active and passive voice. The average was a 60%, which is barely passing
at most schools. There were a few perfect scores, but not enough to constitute going on to the next part of
the semester. The students seemed to understand subject/verb agreement for the most part as well. Once
again, most students got a 100%, with only one student getting an 80%. Overall, this is a much higher
distribution than expected. Many students seemed disengaged during these lectures and to see such a high
percentage rate seems to imply that her teaching style was at least somewhat effective if so many students
did well in the assessment. During the active and passive voice, the teacher gave them a device to easily
identify it- put by zombies in the sentence, if it makes sense, then it was passive voice. The students
seemed to connect with this device and used it to do their homework. However, it is possible this device
confused students, as in which type of voice it connected with, or they forgot it by the time the summative
assessment came around. The student in 3rd hour did extremely well overall, scoring a 94% total and
getting 1 wrong in the sections we looked at. This class period is extremely small, with only 12 students.
The students in 4th hour did moderately well, although their overall average was an 81.5%. This class was
definitely the most robust and active class we had. The students in 1st hour, did do well overall, with a
90% average. They can disengaged because of the morning hour, which is surprising. It is important to
note that we only have 10 students out of around 50 students overall. This is also one page out of a 7 page
assessment. It is possible that these students did understand this information more than our sample size
lets on or vice versa. Before the extra credit offered, students had an average of 77%. It is not ideal, but it
is a C+, which is not bad for a topic so foreign to most students.

On the assessment, there was a strong understanding of regular and irregular verbs
amongst the majority of the students. The average score on the regular and irregular verb section
of the assessment was a 95% within our sample size, with the lowest score still coming in at an
80%. There were ten questions within this section, and covered a wide enough range of the
concept to be considered a sufficient judgement of the students understanding. One section where
this evidence points to the students lack of mastery is in the active and passive voice section. With
an average score of 60% within our sample student group, this demonstrates that the students have
not been able to sufficiently assess what verbs are passive and active. The pattern that was made
evident in this assessment is that students who struggled with the active and passive voice section
often missed a high number of questions in this section. One theory we had proposed is that the
students have switched the correct definitions in their head as to what qualifies as active voice or
passive voice. For example, student 8 missed every question in the active passive voice section. As
shown by her 87% on the entire exam, this student has demonstrated that he/she has a strong
grasp of the unit, but somehow has missed all of the questions. This leads us to believe that she
merely flipped the concepts of active and passive voice, thus showing that she correctly identified
the concepts of the sentence, but labeled them with the opposite response. We believe that the data
is adequate to determine understanding, although adding a section regarding why the students
responded in a certain fashion would give them an opportunity to explain their work towards the
answer, as well as providing the teacher evaluating the assessment with better data to determine
where students may have not understood the unit. This might have helped the student mentioned
above. If she could state that the action was done by somebody instead of just using the by
zombies trick she might have realized her mistake and switched the active/passive voice section.
The data that we have collected suggests that this is at least a fair assessment of what was
being taught by the teacher, and despite the fact that it does leave us with several questions about
quality of the assessment, it is overall a valid measurement of student learning in terms of
assessment content. Each part on the exam is very clear and straightforward. The items are written
in the same format as they are in the grammar textbook, which the students use on a daily basis.
Because the students are familiar with the structure of the questions, they are not surprised or
confused when being checked for comprehension. The test seems as though it has been designed to
measure student comprehension of a specific set of grammatical rules from within a unit. The test,
being divided into nine equal parts containing ten questions each, gives students the opportunity to
express their learning equally in each section that is specific to a grammatical rule that has been
covered previously in the unit. Essentially, there are nine different rules being tested, and each has
its own area on the test to objectively measure student understanding. This allows all major topics
covered in class to be tested on and the knowledge used in a practical manner.
When considering the areas that students struggled with, the data suggests that there is a
pattern of students missing similar items within each section rather than students collectively
doing poorly on a section. For example, in part two, which was the lowest scored section, item 5, 7,
and 10 were the commonly missed questions. The pattern here suggests not that students
misunderstood the directions of this portion of the test, but rather that these specific items were
challenging for some other reason. Similarly, in part three, four students missed item number 6, so
from the sample that we collected, 40% of the students missed this item, which is high relative to
the other items on the exam. These results lead us to believe that the trouble comes not from
directions on the exam or within each section, but from an individual item on the exam that is
complicated for other reasons, which is not clear to us at the moment, but could easily be discussed
with the class in order to figure out why this particular item was so challenging. It is possible that
students felt confused on the topic in context, for example, on question 6 of part 3, the verb is at the
beginning of the sentence, it might have been this one fact that confused students overall. If they did
more examples with the verb in different parts of the sentence, it is possible that they would have
had less problems with this question.
A pretest would have helped to see how much this teachers instruction did to facilitate
their learning in this unit. However, this teacher had all of these students last year, so she might not
have needed it, since she knows what their knowledge would have been. Having a pretest would
have been clearer for us as to what skills were refined and what skills need more work. This
assessment does not give us much information on the students and their engagement with the
material. We get no sense of how they found the teaching style of the instructor. It could have easily
been extremely disengaging and students might have hated going to lecture. Often times when we
were observing, students found the material boring, complaining that they were tired of doing
grammar. Most times students couldnt wait until the lesson was over. The times they were most
engaged is when she had them do team games, such as when they did tenses of verbs. When she
lectured, such as discussing subject- object, students felt much more tuned out to the class.
Although the overall good scores seem to show that it was more the topics discussed in class that
might have proved disengaging compared to the teacher. Since they have a previous relationship
with her, they might understand her teaching style and respond to it well. We also get no sense of
how their homework facilitated their learning. Most days, students had to do questions from the
book covering topics discussed in class. The students did it in class everyday. This homework was
not discussed in class ever. It might have proven to further their understanding or been nothing but
busy work. The 77% average makes it unclear how beneficial it was overall. It is possible though,
based on some of the class discussions, that this homework is what provided them with the best
understanding of the work. Also, as much of this assessment is fill in the blank/true+false, it is
possible the homework mirrored this assessment, which would help students feel more confident
in their work. This assessment is also unclear as to how students came to their answer. We can see
that they used their knowledge to change the tense of the verb, however we get no sense of what it
was that made them do that - Did they guess? Did they use context clues? Did they take their
previous knowledge from using this verb in the past? It would have been helpful if students had to
give some type of explanation as to how they came to the answer, it would be easier for us to gage
how well they comprehended the information. Even if their response was the sentence was past
tense we could see they used their knowledge of tenses to come up with the answer instead of
blindly guessing like we are forced to now. Looking at their homework might have shown areas to
worry about more, such as failing on the active/passive voice on their homework and their
summative assessment. It would give the instructor a clearer sense on what to improve with her
teaching as well as what to go over to improve their knowledge after this assessment.
The assessment reflected the format that the students had previously worked with in
previous formative assessments within the unit. Although many grammar rules tend to be filled
with exceptions, the test served as a fair judgement of what the students know without trying to
trick them with an unfamiliar format. The students demonstrated during class activities and
discussion that they had a good understanding of the unit. There may have been times during the
class where questions may have been answered more efficiently for the students. For example, the
lessons usually consisted of the teacher lecturing to the students, as they followed along in their
workbooks. They were given examples in front of them, and the teacher would ask are there any
questions occasionally during the period, but students who needed clarification often didnt
respond. Instead, some of these students may have had a better chance of understanding the
material if the teacher had included more of a genuine critical thinking section into the formative
assessments instead of fill-in-the-blank sections. The data in passive/active voice points towards a
60% understanding within our sample size. This data leads me to believe that the students hadnt
received a full understanding of this concept. Some students could have used a more hands-on
approach to their learning, where they would be interacting with other students during the class
period, which could have also helped with some students who needed to clarify the rules of the
grammatical unit. As shown by the group of students that received exceptional scores, there were a
number of students that responded well to the type of instruction, but the data also points towards
some sections where a strong number of the students struggled. We believe that the assessment
overall was an example of an effective instruction. Outside of an outlying section where the
concepts of active and passive voice could have been reviewed to a more thorough extent, the
students within our sample group displayed an exceptional grasp on challenging grammatical
concepts. The student data reflects this understanding through their exceptional score on the
regular and irregular verb section, where they scored an average of 95% within our sample group.
The prior knowledge about students also demonstrated this understanding through a group activity
that we had put together for the class. This game asked for the students to divide into teams and
work together in a relay race activity that had them break down a sentence into its parts (i.e.
subject, verb, object, etc.). During the activity, the students caught onto the game quickly and they
also demonstrated an organized break-down strategy of a sentence. Although some students
initially struggled with some sections, the team helped explain to the struggling students how each
concept worked. This collaboration between the students is also an amazing way for the students
to receive instruction from multiple point of views, that may help any issues with students not
understanding how the information was presented by the teacher. By the end of the game, both
teams had a strong grasp of the unit and filled in the sentences flawlessly.
Ultimately, we think that this assessment reflects a high level of student comprehension in
general. It seems that the kids have a strong grasp of the grammar rules that are being assessed so
we would not worry about re-teaching anything except the section of the test that caused a the
greatest struggle by a significant proportion, which is the active/passive voice. Knowing that
students did well in all other sections, suggests that the instruction was consistent between
grammar rules and that students are receptive to this instruction, but it shows that the
active/passive lesson might need more attention or time allotted for student learning or practice.
Knowing that this is the section that caused most struggles for students, we think that it would be a
good idea to find new ways of teaching the active/passive voice. Our cooperating teacher offered
the by zombies method of testing active/passive voice, but it seems that she relied too heavily on
this one particular device, which didnt yield the greatest results. We believe that it would be
beneficial to express the grammatical rules in a variety of ways. Rather than providing the grammar
rules and the single mnemonic device, we would have the students do something more active in the
class, like perform actions and have them phrase the actions in both active and passive voice. For
example, I might have a student throw a paper airplane across the room, and ultimately get my
students to say: John threw the paper plane and The plane was thrown by john and identify
which is active and which is passive. By having students perform fun/exciting actions or even just
getting them to more around and get a little silly, they might be more likely to retain the skill of
determining between the two voices.
On the whole, we think that this assessment demonstrates the need to find multiple ways of
teaching an idea, concept, skill, etc. One method of instruction might work for something, but that
does not necessarily mean that the same method will have the same effect in a different lesson.