Data Collection

 

I have only taught for half of a school year so far, but I did analyze some data during that time. The data was collected via Illuminate DnA. This is software that my school used for their end-of-unit common assessments. Students take the test on the computer, and then the software turns the data into charts and pie graphs that teachers can then analyze. This method worked well for me because I would use the software to see what areas I needed to reteach or focus on. Another program that our school used was iReady. Students would be tested on skills. They would take three diagnostics throughout the year. The first one was at the beginning. The second was in the middle and then the third was at the end. We would have professional learning committees after each diagnostic and review the results and see where students were at and what we needed to focus on. It also helped us with planning interventions for students who needed extra help. According to Roblyer & Hughes (2019), teachers who use data collection and analysis can better prepare classroom materials and they can also find learning gaps. Finding learning gaps is important and helps teachers in their lesson plans. We would use the data that we collected and plan our small groups so that we could have a better intervention. According to Jenny Rankin (2014), it is important to have data for stakeholders as well and to support them in understanding it. At our school, we sent home data from our diagnostics and showed parents how to read the data and provided them with interventions that they could use at home with their children.

I did not teach students how to collect and analyze data in my last classroom, but I can see ways that I could have included this in my lesson plans. I could have had students create a spreadsheet with the different plants and animals found in each region of Georgia and compare them. Another lesson I could have had students do would have been to find data on different animal populations in Georgia over the years for students to compare and then show how pollution or humans have made those numbers decline. Both of these would have been great lesson plans to help students with data collection and analysis.

References

Rankin, J. (2014, July 31). Make the most of student data. ISTE. https://www.iste.org/explore/Lead-the-way/Make-themost-of-student-data

Roblyer, M. & Hughes, J., (2019). Integrating educational technology into teaching: Transforming learning across disciplines (8th ed.). Pearson.