Robert Johnson

April 2019
Student Learning Analysis (SLA)
Secondary Teacher Education, Winter 2019

Introduction:

This Student Learning Analysis was performed in an 10th Grade U.S. History classroom
during the beginning of “The Cold War” unit. Most of these students took World History as
freshman, and should have learned about the Cold War from a world perspective not focused
on the United States. Knowing that students should have some prior knowledge on this topic, I
wanted to see how much they remembered from the Cold War, and how much they knew
about the Cold War from the perspective of the United States.
At the end of my World War II unit, I gave students a writing pre-instruction assessment
that was connected to a specific learning goal. From this assessment, I was able to categorize
students’ knowledge on the learning objective of the Cold War unit into three categories:
Students who do not know anything about the Cold War, students who understood some
causes and impacts of the Cold War, and Students who knew the causes, impacts, and
participants of the Cold War.
Over the course of two weeks, I taught the Cold War from the United States perspective
based on state and district standards. However, after distributing my pre-instruction writing
assessment to my students, the data I collected showed a wide ride of knowledge on the Cold
war stemming from the 1940s to the 1990s. From this data, I realized that the learning
objective could not be met in a two week period, and that I needed to make my learning
objective narrower. By adjusting my learning objective and lesson plans in order to meet the
new learning objective, I focused on the Cold War in the 1940s and 1950s and checked for
student understanding throughout the two week period.

The assessment is clearly aligned with specific learning goals and state/district standards:

This assignment was based on the standard:

8.1 Cold War and the United States Identify, analyze, and explain the causes, conditions, and
impact of the Cold War Era on the United States.

I provided the clear learning objective during the pre-assessment, “Student’s will be able
to explain the causes, conditions, and impacts that the Cold War Era had on the United States.”
Here are the directions to the pre-learning assessment. The directions were, “Directions:
World War II has just ended. The World has been divided up between communist and
democratic nations, the Cold War has begun. What are the causes of the Cold War? What
types of impacts did the Cold War had on the United States and other nations who
participated in the Cold War? What were some of the lasting impacts that the Cold War had on
the United States? Write your answers to these questions in paragraph form below.” In bold
were the specific learning objectives of the assignment and the bolded directions are also clear
state standards from the standard, “8.1 Cold War and the United States Identify, analyze, and
explain the causes, conditions, and impact of the Cold War Era on the United States.”
I chose to use a writing assignment as my assessment because this allowed for students
to work through their prior knowledge on the topic, instead of making guesses on a pretest
multiple choice assessment. This pre-assessment was given to students after the completion of
WWII unit test, and served as a low-stakes assignment after the completion of a test. Students
were given credit on this assignment as long as they attempted to work through their prior
knowledge on the Cold War.

The assessment produced information useful for conducting a substantive analysis of student
understanding:

Pre-assessment directions: World War II has just ended. The World has been divided up
between communist and democratic nations, the Cold War has begun. What are the causes of
the Cold War? What types of impacts did the Cold War had on the United States and other
nations who participated in the Cold War? What were some of the lasting impacts that the
Cold War had on the United States? Write your answers to these questions in paragraph form
below.

1st group: Students who do not know any causes, conditions, or impacts of the Cold War on the
United States. Out of 71 students who took this assessment, 43 students fell into this category:

2nd group: Students on their way to understanding some of the causes, conditions, and impacts
of the Cold War on the United States. Out of 71 students who took this pre-assessment, 19
students fell into this category:
3rd group: Students who understand the causes, conditions, and impacts that the Cold War had
on the United States. Out of 71 students who took this pre-assessment, 9 students fell into this
category:

This pre-assessment of 71 10th grade United States history students produced data that
allowed for an analysis of student understanding, and allowed for me to analyze the
effectiveness of the original learning goal. Based on the results from this pre-assessment, I
realized that my learning objective was too broad, and that it needed to be narrowed down
because I was not going to be able to cover the entire Cold War unit with this class. In the pre-
assessment, students were explaining causes, impacts, and conditions, of the Cold War that
ranged from the 1940s through the 1990s. Knowing that I was only going to be able to cover
the 1940s-1950s Cold War era, I changed my learning goal and modified my lesson plans to
specifically have students analyze the causes, conditions, and impacts of the Cold War during
the 1940s and 1950s over a two week period. I was able to differentiate my instruction in order
to give students a variety of ways to discover the causes, conditions, and impacts of the Cold
War during the 1940s and 1950s. Some of the ways I was able differentiate my instruction for
student learning include: Project based learning through a Cold War Time Capsule project, Near
pod classroom assignments that allowed for students to discover the causes, conditions, and
impacts of the Cold War at their own pace, digital web quests, PowerPoint presentations,
classroom chalk-talk on the causes, conditions, and impacts of the Cold War before students
took the post-assessment.
At the end of this unit, I gave the students a similar writing assignment to the pre-
assessment. Instead of focusing on the overall causes, conditions, and impacts of the entire
Cold War on the United States, the new learning objective was strictly focused on the causes,
conditions, and impacts that the Cold War era had on the United States during the 1940s and
1950s. Below are three examples and categories of student responses to the post-assessment
assignment.

Post assessment directions: World War II has just ended. The World has been divided up
between communist and democratic nations, the Cold War has begun. What are the causes of
the Cold War during the 1940s and 1950s? What types of effects/conditions did the Cold War
have on the United States during the 1940s and 1950s? What were some of the lasting
impacts that the Cold War had on the United States? Write your answers to these questions in
paragraph form below.

1st Group: Able to name a larger event or idea from the Cold War, but unable to relate it as
being a cause, consequence, or lasting impact of the Cold War. Out of 71 students who took
this post assessment, 8 students fell into this category:

2nd Group: Able to name at least one event or idea from the Cold War, and relate it to how it
was either a cause, consequence, or impact of the Cold War on the United States. Out of 71
students who took this post assessment, 38 students fell into this category:

3rd Group: Able to name multiple events and ideas from the Cold War, and is able to relate the
events and ideas to being causes, consequences, or impacts of the Cold War on the United
States during the 1940s and 1950s. Out of 71 students who took this post assessment, 18
students fell into this category:
Analysis of assessment data produced insights into student thinking. Student feedback was
informed by this analysis:

Analyses of student thinking move beyond surface and clearly illuminate important
aspects of student understanding, are soundly based in data and are tied to specific examples
in the student work:

3rd Group Pre-Assessment example: In this example, the student was able to use their prior
knowledge in order to answer the pre-assessment questions. This group was able to show their
range on how much they knew about the Cold war including events and ideas such as, “proxy
wars, Vietnam war, Korean war, communism, end of the cold war in the 1980s, collapse of the
soviet union in 1991.” After seeing this wide range of events, ideas, and time periods in
between these ideas and events from the 3rd groups examples, my feedback was to narrow my
learning objective in order to focus on the Cold War during the 1940s and 1950s.

2nd Group Post-Assessment example- In this example, the student only names one cause of the
cold war, communism. Example from student work, “Some of the causes of the Cold War was
the fear of communism spreading.” However, the student is able to drive the cause of
communism and connect communism to being a consequence of the Cold war. Example from
student work, “The Cold war also caused a lot of problems in the US because people were
getting their lives ruined because they were being falsely accused of being communist.”
Although the student is not able to label that idea as McCarthyism, the student is able to
explain what it is and how it impacted the lives of Americans during the Cold War.

Analyses target both individual student thinking and broader patterns of student
understanding and connects to assessment data:

3rd Group Post-Assessment example: Although not specifically stating which ideas/events are
causes, conditions, and impacts of the Cold War era on the United States during the 1950s, this
example from the third group is able to give a broad pattern to a response of the post-
assessment directions. The student in this example is able to state a cause, “the Yalta
conference was a cause of WWII due to opposing ideologies on how to divide post war Europe.”
Then, is able to explain how McCarthyism is a consequence of the Cold War. Finally, the student
is able to explain lasting impacts of the Cold War through technological advancements.

1st Group Pre-Assessment example: Pre-instruction assessment student work from group 1
indicated that a larger number of students did not know a cause, consequence, or impact of the
Cold War. Most of the students could not remember anything about the Cold War in general.
For example, the student from the first group pre-assessment example stated, “I don’t
remember much about the Cold War, but I tried my best on what I thought.” This was a
consistent pattern throughout the pre-assessment, as students tried to connect on prior
knowledge of the Cold War but could not remember much information.
 The data from these student work samples are represented in ways that clearly show
patterns and significant insights, with student thinking that attempts to go beyond the
assessment. I divided all 71 student responses into 3 categories during the pre-assessment.
After the pre-assessment, I then divided the 71 post-assessment responses into another 3
categories. These 3 categories in the pre and post assessment allowed for me to find patterns
within the students’ works and I was able to modify my learning objective and my lesson plans
in order to focus on each category that a student fell under.

Subsequent instruction is informed by the analysis of student thinking:

After heavily focusing on the wide range of responses from group 3 from the pre-
instruction assessment, the subsequent instruction for the Cold War unit was informed by the
analysis of this type of student thinking. Categorizing the students work into three groups
allowed for me to see the flaws of how I was going to teach this unit. While creating the pre-
assessment, I planned on teaching the overall causes, impacts, and consequences of the entire
Cold War over a two week span. After analyzing the results from the pre-assessment, I
discovered that students did not know much about the Cold War and how it began. The
students also gave answers on the pre-assessment that ranged from examples from the 1940s-
1990s. This data made me realize that I could not teach the entirety of the Cold War in two
weeks, and needed to break the Cold War up into 3 sections: Beginning of the Cold War 1940s-
50s, The 1960s-70s, the end of the cold war. Unfortunately, I did not have enough time to teach
the other two sections in my student teaching experience. However, by analyzing the student
work examples, and concluding that I needed to teach the Cold War over a longer period of
time, I was able to rework my learning objective into a much more manageable goal for
students to achieve while I taught the beginning of the Cold War during the 1940s-1950s.

Additional assessment information was produced to determine student growth:

By having students take a low stakes pre and post assessment on the causes, conditions,
and impacts of the Cold War on the United States during the 1940s & 1950s, I was able to
provide clear evidence of effort to identify changes in student thinking. Not only did I organize
students into three categories that allowed for me to see how much they knew about the Cold
War prior to instruction, but I was also able to use the pre-assessment data in order to adapt to
the needs of my students. I changed my lesson plans and my learning objective for the 1940s
and 1950s Cold War unit in order to address the students’ preconceptions of the beginning of
the Cold War.

The assessment information was useful in illuminating changes in student thinking: In

the pre-assessment, the few students who did know information of the Cold War sporadically
named events, ideas, and people from the Cold War from the 1940s-1990s. However these
students could not connect those ideas to the larger learning objective of causes, conditions,
and impacts of the Cold War. After analyzing this data, changing my learning objective to focus
on the Cold War during the 1940s & 1950s, and post instruction, students were able to develop
higher level thinking answers in the post-assessment (which was the same format as the pre). In
the post-assessment, students were able to drive a big idea of the unit, like the student in
group 2 with communism, and connect an idea as being a cause, consequence, and lasting
impacting of the Cold War rather than randomly naming people, events, and ideas from the
Cold War.

The assessment information was shared with students appropriately as feedback.

After analyzing the post-assessment and diving the students up into three categories that
represented how much they learned over this unit, we had a classroom discussion on the
causes, consequences, and lasting impacts that the Cold War had on the United States during
the 1940s & 1950s. Recognizing from the assessment that some students were still unfamiliar
with how communism, capitalism, and McCarthyism connected as causes, consequences, and
impacts of the Cold War, I broke the students up into groups. In these groups I took a big sheet
of paper and wrote the ideas that students seemed to still be struggling with (such as
communism, capitalism, McCarthyism) and wrote that central idea in the middle. Then, I
allowed for students to work together in order to determine how those ideas were causes,
consequences, or impacts of the Cold War on the United States during the 1950s. At the end,
the groups shared their findings out loud with the rest of the class, and I had all students keep a
record of how these ideas were causes, conditions, and impacts of the Cold War on the United
States during the 1940s & 1950s. By having students work through these ideas that they still did
not understand, I was able to give informal feedback on what I saw students struggling with in
the post-assessment, instead of calling the students out for what they got wrong on the post-
assessment. This allowed for all students to keep a record of the learning objective, and reflect
on their answers in their post-assessment in order to see if their ideas aligned with the
classroom discussion.

Conclusion:
Not only does this student learning analysis demonstrate my ability to thoroughly report
on my work, but it also shows my willingness to grow as an educator, and adapt to the needs of
my students. During my written pre-assessment, I collected data that specifically connected to
a Michigan SS HSCE state standard. After getting a variety of answers on the pre-assessment
that ranged from the Cold War in 1940-1990, I quickly discovered that I needed to modify my
learning objective for this unit. Most students were unaware of how the Cold War began, so I
needed to make adjustments in order to better fit the needs of my students. After modifying
my lesson plans and learning objective to focus on the causes, conditions, and impacts of the
Cold War on the United States during the 1940s & 1950s, I was able to narrow my post-
instruction of the pretest to the beginning of the Cold War. After two weeks of 1940s & 1950s
Cold War instruction, I then gave students a similar writing post-assessment prompt. However,
this time I wanted students to just focus on the causes, conditions, and impacts that the Cold
War had on the United States during the 1940s & 1950s, instead of the entire Cold War. This
allowed for students to produce deeper level thinking in their post-assessments. After the post-
assessment, I analyzed the data and was able to provide informal feedback on concepts they
were still not understanding from the assessment through a classroom discussion. Instead of
calling out the students for what they got wrong on the assessment, I allowed for them to work
together in order to discover the big ideas of the unit. Overall, this student learning analysis
was beneficial for myself and my students. This analysis allowed for me to see how much my
students knew about the Cold war, while at the same time allowed for me to reflect on my
planning and learning objectives of a unit. Student learning analyses will be implemented
throughout my future teaching practices, as this process allows for me to see growth in each
students’ learning process, along with being able to be critical of myself on my expectations for
my students.