KA Step 2: Data Analysis

Section I- Students:
I work with 18 fifth grade students, ages 9-11, in reading and English
language arts. I have 10 girls and 8 boys. Five of my students are marked as EIP,
which means they did not pass at least one section of the CRCT in the areas of
math, reading, or language arts. One of my students is labeled SST, which means
there is a learning disability that must be monitored and attempted to improve. I
currently have 3 students in the PC (gifted) program. All of my students are a part of
a Title I school in an area with low demographics. My students are expected to meet
all state standards, which they should be, while not having the resources or at-home
help they may need to exceed.

Section II- Course:

The test results that were shown are a result of a 5 question test given to
assess the comprehension skills of my regular ed. students. These students are
taught reading, English language arts and writing every day within a 55 minute time
slot. Students had been working with inferences and finding the main idea. Along
with these concepts, students had learned to identify implicit and explicit details to
help make inferences while reading. These test questions were short answer to
allow the students to make an inference and EXPLAIN where in the passage they got
the information. The test what meant to measure the students mastery of making
inferences while locating the explicit details to support the inference made. Main
objectives assessed here were: Students will infer throughout a text to come to a
conclusion, students recognize implicit details to make an inference, students recall
information (explicit details) to support their conclusions about a text. The
assessment used Why? questions along with Explain short answer to allow the
students to walk through the process of making an inference.

Section III- Descriptive Analysis:

Overall, the students did pretty well on the assessment. Looking at the
percentage grades the average was a 70%. The mode, mostly seen average per
student, was a 60%. Scores ranged from 20% to 100% with standard deviation
coming to 24.0098. Since there were five questions each student would lose 20
points per question. The question that was missed the most was a question based
on the characters relationship. There are a couple of reasons I feel that this
happened: The question was worded, What type of relationship did the two have?
This led a lot of student to answer, Good, Bad. The answer was asking the type
of relationship, such as husband and wife. Also, our students come from families of
different cultures which do not give every student a look at a typical husband and
wife household. By using the Spearman-Brown reliability formula we can test the

reliability of an assessment as long as questions are comparable and assess the

same concepts. You do not have to assess with the same amount of questions to
reach this goal. The Spearman-Brown calculations conclude that more questions
allow for a better reliability. This allows me to see that my assessment should have
included more questions. Due to the depth of knowledge needed I did not want to
overwhelm students with a long passage or too many questions. I could have
adjusted the passage to be a little longer in length, and also include more questions
(maybe 10 rather than 5) to assess their knowledge of the passage. Below you will
see the incorrect and correct responses for each type of question. This allows me to
see what type of questions students struggle with when drawing inferences:
90%
80%
70%
60%
50%
40%
30%
20%
10%
0%
Correct
Incorrect

Section IV- Analysis of Strengths and Weaknesses

Student strengths and weaknesses were evident in the data analysis phase.
Inferences do not come easy to the grade level I work with, so this assessment was
able to assess their strengths in comprehension. For example, if they did well then
they have a deep knowledge of comprehension. Most of my students got questions
right that required them to find explicit (exactly stated) information in order to come
to a decision. The weaknesses showed in questions that made them explore options
or relationships in the text. Also, there was a question about how a character felt
based on what happened in the passage, and some students felt he should have felt
sad about a different scenario that was mentioned. This only became an issue
because the students were bypassing the main reason the character would have
been upset, and they went with the more obvious and relatable choice. This allowed

me to adjust learning to not only using prior experiences to infer, but also to stress
the importance of explicit details being noted before making an inference.

Section V- Improvement Plan

I feel a couple of adjustments could be made to the assessment.

First, I would model usage of explicit details to infer without resulting to prior
knowledge. All of us have varying experiences, so showing how to refer to
explicit ALONG with implicit details would help.
Students were to write the explicit details to support their inference, but I
should have required a certain number of details to ensure they had the
proper support. Some student do the bare minimum required which can
cause an error in their response for short answer.
Also, I could differentiate by giving my gifted or above-average learners a
longer passage because the passages were not lengthy compared to fifth
grade level reading material.
To be certain the students showed mastery I could have also included a
section where the students had to match inferences with explicit details. This
would have shown me who was unable to make the connections when given
the correct responses.