Students in the Driver's Seat of a Data Driven Classroom

Original Post 4/24/14

It has been a goal of mine this year to make our classroom more student-centered.  After students complete an assignment we often have a reflective piece called Two Stars and a Wish.  This requires the students to identify two things they did well and one thing they wish they did differently.  The students are great at this now, and reflect often on their own work and the work of their peers.

However, students rarely get to work with data.  Now that so many schools are become data-driven, shouldn't we allow students to have a part in this?  Since it is their data, and they are the drivers, I couldn't believe I had not done this before.  In our class once a week the students answer multiple choice reading comprehension questions and answer one short constructed response or SCR.  As a class we took these two specific assessment pieces and turned a Friday into Data-Day.   Here is how we did it.

Step 1:  Placing Student Work in Chronological Order

Students pulled out a year's worth of work, and placed it in chronological order.  This took longer than expected.  Even though all students were required to keep their work samples in a certain folder, some assignments were missing.  Part of the reason for this is some students did not complete assignments, forgot to hand them in, or students simply lost their work.  

20 Min

Step 2:  Students Record Data

We wanted to incorporate some math skills in this lesson.  Students were responsible for turning all their fraction scores into percents.  For example if they received an 18/20 they turned into 90%.  As the students worked out these problems some of the students said, "So this is how you get a grade."  Students then recorded this information onto one table.

20 Min

Step 3:  MS Excel

With a partner students entered their scores in MS Excel.  They then created a line graph based on that data and printed them out.  We worked with partners, because for 5th graders it is sometimes difficult to remember all the steps need to create a line graph in MS Excel, and when they have a partner students can work together to problems solve.

40 Min

Step 4:  Data Analysis

This was the most important part and not everyone was able to get to this step on Friday.  Once students printed out their graphs, they had to come up with five questions about their data.  At first students wanted to create questions like, "What was my high score? What was the range?  What was my average?"  While I was very happy to see them using math vocabulary words when forming their questions, they were a little off the mark in terms of why we were doing this activity.  We then worked together to create questions that could not be answered by using just the graph they created.  Examples like, "Why did I do so well on March 11?  Why did my score decrease from October to November?" were some examples of the great reflective questions the students created.  

20 Min

Step 5:  Student Responses

Students were given a week to analyze their work samples and to answer the reflective questions they created.    Students will have more time in class to this, but some of this work will be done for homework as well.  The students will be posting the answers to their questions on our kidblog site, an example can be viewed here.  Responses are due by Friday, April 26th.
Homework 1 week

I am hoping through this process students will be able to see the amazing gains they have made throughout the year, will identify areas they are still weak in, and create a plan to correct those areas of weakness.  By taking these steps we are allowing the students to look at their progress over a longer period of time, which I have never given them time to do.