Evaluation

A review of the results from my Teacher Work Sample has uncovered several areas that were successful in educating the students and several areas that left a little bit to be desired. In my opinion, I feel that my overall performance was effective in educating the students even if all the benchmarks were not met by the students in the unit. I set the expectations high for this unit because I believe this motivates students to achieve at a higher rate, and it helps the teacher mindset going into the unit. Every student that I taught during the this time improved in at least one learning goal from the unit, and a vast majority of the students were able to improve on two or all of the learning goals.

The learning goal that showed the highest level of achievement was the first learning goal. The first learning goal stated that students will be able to investigate and analyze the origins of the Cold War. When the students took the pre-assessment, the class average was 57%. The class as a whole averaged 81% in this learning goal on the assessment, for an improvement of 24%. There were four questions on the pre-assessment and five questions on the post assessment. The information of this learning plan was covered in two lessons over three days. One reason this learning goal was the highest achieving was due to the actual ease of the material. Most of the information is fact-based, which the students found easier to learn than philosophically based. Another reason this learning goal was scored the highest was the amount of days used to cover the amount of material. I took three days to cover material which I most likely would have used only two in the later learning goals. I believe this gave the students more time to absorb the material.

The learning goal that would be considered the least successful is the third learning goal. The third learning goals states students will be able to assess and examining the various changes and influences to society during the 1950s. The students scores the lowest on this learning goal on both the pre-assessment, 41%, and the post assessment, 76%. There were two questions on the pre-assessment and five questions on the post assessment. I covered the material for this learning goal in two lessons over two days. The lessons were both lecture and hands on. I feel three reasons exist that make this the lowest achieving of all the learning goals. The first reason would be rushing through the material. I covered about twice as much material than the first lesson in one less day. I think rushing through this caused some of the students to have trouble grasping the concepts which I were wanting them to understand. The second reason is that this learning goal had the most material that the students did not have pre-existing knowledge. As the pre-assessment shows, the students scored more than ten points lower on average than the first and second learning goals. The third reason is not assigning homework for these two lessons. With every lesson in the first learning goals, I had assigned a homework assignment to map where the students were in development. I failed to do so on this learning goal, which I believe led me to overestimate how well the students were prepared for this learning goal.

Increasing the success rate for the third learning goal should be fairly easy, in my opinion. The first fix I would do is add more time. I would add a day or maybe two to the learning goal, allowing me to take my time through the information instead of feeling rushed. This would give the students the best opportunity to learn the material. The second fix I would do is assign homework for each lesson plan. This would give the students more chances to understand and learn the concepts within the lessons, as well as give myself an opportunity to see how far the students developed on the lessons so I know if I need to spend a little more time on this learning goal during the review for the test.