I was looking for something that would epitomize the end of another school year – a conversation, a farewell, a moment. There were plenty of these. There always are. Every year you let go of a group of kids that will never be duplicated. Each class is unique, and while its comforting look forward to the next year, its important to reflect upon – and acknowledge the accomplishments made during – the year that was.
This year had many firsts for me. It was my first year teaching 3rd grade. It was the first year I had a Smart Board. It was the first time I taught students the 7 Habits of Highly Effective People and used them daily to help students develop their leadership strengths. Students created “talk shows” to conclude thematic units. All students worked in book clubs all year. I felt more comfortable teaching math than reading and language arts. I am proud of all of these things and hope to take them with me into the next school year.
One thing I am not so proud of is that we fell short of the academic goal I set for our class his year. I wrote in an earlier entry that setting goals is a challenge, especially broad goals that require time to track. My goal for reading and math was that each student would achieve 1 year’s worth of learning gains by the end of the 3rd quarter as measured by STAR testing. The STAR test is fairly arbitrary, and does not require students to think at a very high level. But, I have found that it is accurate in charting levels of improvement. Students who improve significantly in tasks that require higher levels of thought including analysis, application, and creation do better on this test that merely measures remembering and understanding. While portfolios, graphic organizers, writing assignments can also reflect student growth, I decided to use this test as the common tool to measure individual student learning gains.
The data shows that 16 of 21 students met this goal in math. The average growth of our students was 1.7 years! 11 students posted scores at a 5th grade level or higher. That's fantastic for that group. But, the goal was not for 11 kids to be overwhelmingly successful while others fell short. We came close, but didn’t perform as I would have liked on the whole. It’s nice that so many students did well. It’s great that our class score looks good at a glance. I’m still going to be bothered by the fact that 5 students didn’t get where they needed this year.
The scores were not as strong in reading. 10 of 21 students met the goal. The class average was .9 years growth. To put this in perspective, 6 of the students who did not meet the goal of 1.0 years improvement notched a score of .9. You can choose to say that this is very close to the goal and therefore pretty good. That’s not how I would prefer to see it. I have some work to do. I need to develop better reading lessons, especially ones that will help students develop their vocabulary (a specific area where we lacked proficiency). I need to do a better job spiraling back to certain concepts with specific students so those .9s can become 1.0+s. (And, forgive me if it sounds like I am referring to students merely as numbers. This is done only in response to the data.)
Setting goals isn’t done to set you – or your students – up to fall into either failure or success. It’s so that you can assess what you are doing in the classroom, and adjust your practices. A year from now I won’t remember the particulars of these tests. But, my instruction should improve because of them, helping me to better reach the next wave of students.
When I look back at this school year I’ll see S and P on the phone with a reporter from the Arizona Republic
