EOC Prep: Data, data everywhere...

What have I been doing?  Data tracking.  Tomorrow is my students' state end of course exam for biology.  It's hard to believe that it's already that time...

Since last Friday, we have been working on practice tests and review.  I have been struggling over the years to find an EOC review method that works best.  Let's just say that the struggle continues.

Some teachers say they start at the beginning of the curriculum and revisit every topic, then take a practice test.  I've found that style ineffective for me and my style of teaching:  the students tune out and none of us get a very good assessment of what we know/don't know until we're done.

Lately, I have been trying to tailor review activities to individual students' needs:  I usually give a practice test as a diagnostic and use that to guide the review material.  Sometimes I have done "whole class" reviews, other years I have done individual review packets.  In a perfect world, I would give a post-practice test afterwards, but we always seem to run out of time.

This year, I sort of blended my methods.  I somehow actually had time to create a real, live data tracker for their EOC practice test results.  Data tracking is something that was stressed heavily in my alternative teacher certification program, but I've never had the time to utilize it in my own classes.  The schools I've taught at haven't mandated it, and it's time consuming to create all of the necessary tools from scratch.  But somehow this year I had a chance to sit down and make a simple excel spreadsheet to track my students performance on the EOC practice test.

Raw data for each student per question, color-coded by unit-- 1 for answering a question correctly, 0 for incorrect.

Raw scores for each student and color-coded performance for each unit.  Missing data from a handful of students, hence the reds.

I also calculated the % of students who answered each question correctly.  I had several students absent, so no question has 100% correct.

The results have been really interesting.  I also have successfully gotten myself worked up into a tizzy.  You can see the numbers for some of my standard biology students in the 2nd picture above, and they are NOT pretty.  But in years past, I do recall students doing significantly better on the actual EOC vs. the practice test.  Last year, I believe only my absolute brightest standard students even passed the same practice test, yet they all had strong scores on the real exam.  Thanks to this data tracker, I should eventually have facts to support my recollection...

Based off the data, students then had to complete a combined class/independent review activity.

There were six questions that had lower than 50% of students answering correctly.  We reviewed these six topics as a class (boring lecture style).  Of these six questions:  

• One was a cell diagram where it was unclear if the arrow was pointing to the ER specifically or a ribosome on the ER.  That was an easy fix.
• One involved a coral reef food web.  I was really surprised that this question was missed so frequently, but when I asked the class about it, apparently it was the way that the diagram was drawn that threw a lot of students off.  They misinterpreted the diagram and thought it was a trick question.
• One (well, technically two but we combined them) were testing for macromolecules in food.  We just needed to review that topic, since most students had forgotten which indicator to use for each macromolecule.
• One (technically two) were on enzymes.  I did not cover enzymes well.  We did enzymes the week my classes were disrupted by students taking the ACT Plan test.  So we revisited the topic.
• One was on the percentage of chromosomes in gametes formed by meiosis.  Now, every single student in my classes can repeat that gametes are haploid and have half the chromosomes of the parent cell.  But for some reason, seeing the number as a percentage threw them for a loop.
• The last was a tricky pedigree chart for an x-linked recessive disorder.  It began with an affected father and carrier mother who produced affected sons and daughters.  Seeing both males and females affected made many students assume it was an autosomal disorder.

After our whole class review, I gave students the breakdown of how they scored for each unit.  Based on their score, they had to attend stations with review materials for their weakest units.  The idea for the activity was good, but it was difficult to execute.  If I can find a way to streamline and organize the stations, it may work better in the future.

So... that's that.  Tomorrow is the big test.  I should find out their quick scores after the new year and their full results sometime in July.  I am extraordinarily curious to see how my standard biology class will fare and if the class average will be higher than last year's average (I didn't have any honors students last year to compare).  I really want feedback on how effective the modeling curriculum has been for my teaching!!!!