Cameron Kanner Student Learning Analysis 22’

It is impossible to properly teach without being able to peak into the minds of

your students. That is why assessments are so important, they give us insight about

what we have already done and give us the pieces to what we need to do next. That is

my goal with the assessment that I am analyzing here. I aim to use the assessment to

see how the class as a whole is doing, as well as being able to see inside the minds of

individual students and the different trains of thought they use. But also after peaking

inside the minds of my students use that information and data as puzzle pieces to help

craft how we move to the next lesson.

The Assessment Is Clearly Aligned With Specific Learning Goals and

State/District Standards

For this particular assessment, we were moving through our chapter on voting

and elections within AP Government and Politics on voting and elections. Within this

specific chapter, the AP college board has set a specific learning objective that states:

“explain how the different processes work in a U.S. presidential election.” Obviously

this learning objective is quite vague to cover an entire chapter, so I had to distill the

vague chapter objective into specific class objectives that focused on what the class

was learning about. The process of taking a vague, more general chapter objective and

focusing on what is occurring during one or two days within our classroom led to

learning goals focused on how delegates are selected, as well as differentiating

between pledged and unpledged delegates. The two specific learning goals that I

created to connect with the assessment was 1) students will be able to determine the

differences between states and how they decide their delegates; and 2) students will be

able to compare and contrast pledged delegates to superdelegates. I decided to focus

Cameron Kanner Student Learning Analysis 22’

on the two main sections within the primaries and caucuses portion of this chapter,

while still emphasizing this aspect of differences in processes that is specifically stated

within the AP college board standard. I explicitly used the AP college board standards

to not only set learning objectives that applied to what the classroom was going to be

doing, but also have objectives that I can use to analyze student thinking through

assessment that I know connects to the standards.

The Assessment Produced Information Useful In Conducting a Substantive

Analysis of Student Understanding

I decided to create a pretty simple formative assessment in order to gain insight

into the level of student understanding within my classroom. I just gave the students

two questions, one on the different ways to elect delegates and one on the different

types of delegates, that easily connected back to the learning objectives. Even though

the formative assessment in itself was quite simple, I believe that the simplicity was

crucial to getting a sense of student understanding. Due to the fact that it was simple

questions, the vast majority of students felt that they were able to provide an honest

effort and give an actual attempt on answering these two questions. Which, in my

humble opinion, at the end of the day is the biggest goal of giving these types of

assessments. Our hope is always that all students give their best attempt because that

provides us with the most accurate understanding of the level of understanding across

our classroom.

When looking through the assessment results for one class period, twenty six out

of the total thirty seven students within the class showed a competency in

understanding the basic differences between different types of primaries and delegates.
Cameron Kanner Student Learning Analysis 22’

That means that seventy percent of the students within that one class period can

understand and identify the basic differences that connect to our learning objectives.

When looking at what

qualifies as showing

competency in

understanding these

differences, student

sample A is a great

example: when looking

at student sample A, we

see a student who has

grasped the basic differences between primaries and basic differences between

delegates. The student has exemplified their understanding on how the different types

of primaries do or do not require registering based on party affiliation, and in what type

of time period an individual must declare to vote. In regards to delegates, the student is

showing an understanding of the basic difference that pledged delegates vote based on

the decisions of the state, whereas superdelegates do not necessarily have to do that.

Seventy percent of the classroom at least showed a basic understanding of the

differences that are focused on in our learning objectives, similar to the baseline in

sample A.

Analysis of Assessment Data Provided Insight Into Student Thinking Student

Feedback Was Informed By This Analysis.

Cameron Kanner Student Learning Analysis 22’

As previously stated this was a simple formative assessment, which not only

allowed for great data on the overall understanding of the classroom, but also different

levels of individual student thinking. While collecting data from this formative

assessment, I was able to pinpoint students who were not showing competency in both

of our learning targets. One such example of a student who struggled with the learning

objective focused on selecting

delegates can be seen when

examining student sample B:

When looking at this student

sample I see a train of thought

that does not align with our

learning objective, but I understand where the thought process is coming from. Media

and their coverage of primaries has nothing to do with the differences between types of

primaries. But we had just talked endlessly about the role of media within our political

parties unit that we had recently finished up, so I can understand why a student may

connect open and closed political events to the media’s coverage. A student confusing

the role of media with different types of primaries is an easy solution, and I can use the

data collected from seeing multiple students make a connection to media as part of my

feedback to the class as a whole.

Other students struggled with completely understanding our second learning

objective, focused on pledged vs. unpledged delegates, which can be seen when

looking at student sample C:

Cameron Kanner Student Learning Analysis 22’

When looking at sample C, the student is very close to showing competency of

understanding this learning objective. The issue here is that they did not make the

connection between pledged delegates supporting one certain candidate that is decided

by the voice and votes from the state they are representing. Once again the student’s

thought process is understandable and they are so close to being able to check off this

learning objective, just need to add that last simple, but crucial connection in order to

show a fulfilled understanding. But being able to see that students are just missing this

small connection is really impactful in the type of feedback I can give them, where I can

really emphasize the connection between the people’s voice and pledged delegates.

Subsequent Instruction Is Informed By The Analysis Of Student Thinking

My formative assessment was really helpful in showing me data that I could use

to configure the lesson for the following day. As mentioned previously, seventy percent

of students showed competency of the two learning objectives. But, that leaves thirty

percent of students who need help with at least one of the learning objectives, which

means that these objectives cannot be forgotten as we move onto the next lesson. I

decided that using our daily warm-up the next day was the proper medium to come

back to these learning objectives, and hopefully help make sure every student is

showing competency with these objectives.

I simply just made the same questions

from the formative assessment of their

question of the day, but instead of

having them write their answers down

again I encourage the students to just

Cameron Kanner Student Learning Analysis 22’

discuss their answers with those around them, and then we will come back to discuss

as a class. Typically, when we discuss as a class I mix in taking volunteers to share as

well as randomly picking students. So for this discussion that is the closing portion of

our warm up I could “randomly” ask the students who showed some signs of thinking

that did not directly align with the learning objectives to share their responses. I had two

hopes when calling on these students: 1) they would provide answers that would show

me that a discussion with peers helped them to adjust their thinking, or 2) even if they

were still struggling with their line of thinking in regards to aligning with the objective it

would push them to focus their attention on the question, and the subsequent

discussion that highlights the correct line of thinking. Also, having a group discussion

allows me to provide the feedback points that I mentioned earlier, and be able to

emphasize common points of distraction to the class as a whole, so no one feels

singled out.

Additional Assessment Information Was Produced To Determine Student Growth

Not only did the group discussion as part of our warm up act as a good way to

use the subsequent class period to clear up misunderstandings and struggles with the

learning objectives, but also as a way to informally assess the students after they had

time to discuss with their peers. As previously mentioned, I purposely called on

students who, by using the data I collected, I saw had struggled with the learning

objectives. Once again, I did not call on these students with any attempt to embarrass

them or highlight where their line of thinking went off course. I wanted to see if

discussing with peers would be all the help they needed, and if not, it provided an

avenue for them to join a larger discussion and a push to listen to the thinking of other
Cameron Kanner Student Learning Analysis 22’

students. Overall, I felt that this informal assessment was a success. I was able to hear

the students thinking in their own words, which for some students is more comfortable

than writing down their thoughts on paper. I thought especially in regards to the first

objective based on the different types of primaries, discussions with peers is exactly

what the students needed and the responses they shared with me definitely showed

competency in regards to that specific objective. When discussing the second

objective, I felt that the group discussion was helpful to the students in seeing the very

miniscule details that may have been missed that were the difference between showing

a full understanding or not, and it set them on the right path for future growth.

Overall, I am happy with what this basic, simple formative assessment was able

to do. I was able to see the overall trends of the classroom as a whole, and how many

students are checking the boxes next to the different learning objectives. I could notice

specific trends that may have distracted the students from reaching the level of

competency needed to check those boxes. And at the end of the day I could take all of

that information into account and plan subsequent lessons that help all students be able

to check those boxes, and provide for their future growth. Which, at the end of day, is

why we use assessments in the first place.