Erich Hoffmann

Data Analysis

Subject Area: __Science__________________________ Grade Level: ____9th_____

Formative or Performance Task: _____Formative___________________________

Part A:
What are the students expected to do?
Students are expected to interpret the data collected during a lab over
specific heat and relate that data to the reason that Colorado and Hawaii have
different climates.
Which standards (CCSS or content standards) or curriculum expectations
are being assessed?
Colorado High School standard 3.4 Climate is the result of energy transfer
among interactions of the atmosphere, hydrosphere, geosphere, and biosphere
What do you consider to be a proficient response on this assessment?
Exactly what do students need to say or write for you to consider their
work proficient?
Specific heat relates to climate because land and water have different
specific heats. Hawaii is surrounded by water which has a very mild climate. It takes
a long time for water to heat and cool keeping Hawaii the consistently the same
temperature all year long. Colorado is surrounded by land. Which has low specific
heat and we have a very wide range of temps. Because land cools and heats very
quickly.
Did the assessment give students a good opportunity to demonstrate
what they know?
I think that is did give them a good opportunity. There were so many answers
that were right there that if this was my class we could have recapped the next day
to try and push people from being on the bubble to completely understanding and
getting the big idea here.

Part B:

Class performance:
Objectives met: 15%

Objectives partially met: 55%

Objectives not met: 30%

Part C:
Choose a few samples to review from each level (low, expected, high) and
discuss and identify the prerequisite knowledge that students
demonstrated that they knew.
Objectives met:
Students demonstrated that they understand water has a higher
specific heat compared to land. They also demonstrated that they understand this
means that water warms up and cools down slower than land. Resulting in the
difference.
Objectives partially met:
These students demonstrated that they understand that the climates
are very different between Colorado and Hawaii. They also understand that it has
something to do with water and land. They usually referred to water as humidity
and land as dry air.
Objectives not met:
These students demonstrated that there is a difference between
Hawaii and Colorado.

Part D:
Using the reviewed samples from each level, discuss and identify the
misconceptions, wrong information, and what students did not
demonstrate that was expected.

Objectives met:
None of the students related their answers to what they say in the lab.
They all answered the question correctly, but did no talk about their data or
observations at all.

Objectives partially met:

Almost all of these students related the difference in climate to either
humidity, or elevation or they think that Hawaii has large swings in temp. These
students were on the right track, they just did not communicate their answer right.

They know that it has to do with water, but did not think about the huge mass of
water that is all around Hawaii.

Objectives not met:

These students do not seem to understand specific heat. They related
the difference in climate to location to the equator. The amount of air present at
each location. They did not make any connection between specific heat and climate.
Example of Objectives met work:

Example of Objectives partially met work:

Example of Objectives not met work:

Part E:
What patterns or trends are noted for the whole class?
The major pattern that I saw was that most students understand at
least a little bit of the objectives. Over half the class just needs a little help to make
those last few connections to properly answer the posed question. The
understanding it there now I just need to make the light bulb come on for them to
move up to the next step. About 70% of the class understands that the difference is
the fact the Hawaii is an island and Colorado is land locked. They just need some
help with conveying their thoughts I think do really nail the answer.
What instructional strategies will be beneficial for the whole class?
The first strategy that I think would help these students would have
been a check in process. Question them see where they are at on their thinking to
ensure that they are on the right track. This would provide me with the opportunity
to push them into the right direction and help address misconceptions with the
individual students.
The second strategy that I think would have help is to have a whole
class discussion about the trends that were found in their data. Try to have the
students make as many connections as they can to what it all means. The more
times the students hear the information the more likely that information is to stick.
This also gives the students the opportunity to talk their way through their logic
which could have help many students push to the next level of thinking.

Finally the third strategy that I think would have helped the class was
to do a quick KWL. This was the students third and last day of talking about specific
heat and it would have had multiple benefits to the class. One it gets the students
really thinking about the subject and two it lets me gauge where the students are at
in their understanding so that I could have structured the rest of the lesson to better
suite their needs as students.

Based on the teams diagnosis of student responses at the high,

expected, and low levels, what instructional strategies will students at
each level benefit from?
All The students would benefit from all the strategies that are listed above no
matter their level of understanding. What is good for one student is going to be
good for all students no matter what. Their level of understanding would not change
the strategies used because all the strategies could push any of the students to the
next level of understanding.