Chemistry EOC and CCI Results

I think I've earned all of the above after this semester.  It was dreadful.  But I want to reiterate, it was not the chemistry modeling curriculum I found dreadful.  Rather, it was the combination of a lousy group of especially unmotivated students, attempting new curriculum, and a number of other factors out of my control.

I'm not going to lie, I was truly worried about my students' EOC scores.  As I have said before, a large portion of our annual teaching evaluation comes from student growth on their state exams.  Across the board, my students were not showing the strong mastery I usually see.

The EOC results:

Spring 2015 - Modeling Curriculum

58 total students (all standard)

Average Score:  83.5

Median Score:  84

Lowest Score:  66

Highest Score:  96

Failures:  3

2013-2014 - Traditional Instruction

79 total students (all standard)

Average Score:  84.0

Median Score:  83

Lowest Score:  66

Highest Score:  94

Failures:  3

As you can see, the differences are minuscule.  My class average was half a point lower, but my median was a point higher than last year.  My lowest scores were the same, but my highest scores were higher.  I think it's worth noting, last year's junior class was collectively one of the highest performing groups of students we've ever had at this school.  Overall, they were a bright and motivated bunch.  This year's juniors are collectively considered to be the polar opposites of their preceding class.  I only say that to illustrate why I'm not kicking myself over the half point drop in class average.

What I am kicking myself about is the failures.  I had the same number of failures this year, but with less students.  It works out to a 5% failure rate this school year vs. a 4% failure rate last school year.  If that wasn't bad enough, 2 of those 3 failures were complete surprises to me.  I had targeted a list of about 8 students whom I was seriously concerned about.  Of those 8, only 1 failed, which I had unfortunately anticipated.  But my other 2 failures were students with B and C averages in class.  They performed well on my assessments and the practice EOC.  I am dumbfounded as to why neither passed.  While neither were child prodigies, I had zero indication that they were at risk of failure.  One student actually scored higher on her practice EOC than the actual EOC, and she's not one who I would suspect of even cheating.  Consider me stumped.

I gave the Chemistry Concepts Inventory as my final exam.  This is a hard test geared towards college level students, so I don't base their "grade" off their score.  Instead, I give it to them as a pre-test/post-test and they earn a 100 on the final if they show improvement (I don't tell them their pre-test scores).

I plugged their data into another homemade Excel data tracker, hoping to identify some trends on where my students are weakest and strongest:

Pre-test data... with unit/topics listed at the top for each question.  Blue indicates something I felt was strongly covered.  Yellow were students who I had no data on because they transferred into my class late.

Post-test data, including the difference in score.  The student with a -8 was absent and didn't take the post-test yet.  The -3 difference on another student is correct, though.  The #VALUE indicate students who I didn't have data on or were exempt from the post-test due to school activities.

The data:

Pre-Test

54 students

Average Score:  5.6 out of 22 questions

Highest Score:  11 out of 22

Lowest Score:  0 out of 22

Post-Test

52 students

Average Score:  6.8 out of 22 questions

Highest Score:  12 out of 22 (not the same student who had the highest pre-test score)

Lowest Score:  1 out of 22

Average Gain:  1.2

Highest Gain:  6

Number of Students with Gains:  35

Number of Students with No Change:  10

Number of Students with Regression:  7

One student (whom I've had severe behavioral/disciplinary issues with all year) actually scored 6 points worse on the post-test than the pre-test.  Lovely.

I tried to track the questions for strongest/weakest topics and patterns on what students answered correctly and incorrectly, but the data was all over the place.  I couldn't identify many real patterns.  Overall, I think the majority of my students were completely guessing both times they took this test.  The students who had no change didn't even answer the same questions correctly both times.  

The only two questions where I saw a noticeable change in results were questions #7 and #8, which were related questions.  Question #7 is true or false about matter being destroyed when a match burns.  Question #8 is the reason for the answer in question #7.  75% of students answered those questions correctly on the post-test, as compared to 46% and 52% on the pre-test.  Nice gains, although I have to shake my head about the 25% who still managed to answer those questions wrong...

First Day of Chemistry!

So... this post is 2 days late.  Our first day of the new semester was on Monday.  Would you believe we're already off schedule?  Thank you inclement weather-- school was dismissed at 12:10 today, and will be closed tomorrow.  Yay for snow days, although there's nothing like being one and a half days behind after the first week.

I am teaching all standard chemistry this semester.  I currently have 57 students between three sections-- I'm sure that will change.

The first day of class, after all the necessary introductions and paperwork, I did the "Exploding Can" demo:

The Can

You can see a YouTube video of it HERE (I did not makes this video, despite using the same brand of coffee).

I set up the demo by explaining to students that methane is a gas that is lighter than air as I was filling the can.  I dimmed the lights and ignited the methane coming out the top hole.  I told students to record their observations and to keep their eye on the flame at all times.  The flame burns for about 3-5 minutes, culminating in a small explosion that scares the bejezus out of the students..

With their groups at their tables, I then had students story board the particles at the beginning, middle, and end of the demonstration.  The results were pretty interesting.  Here are some highlights from my 3rd block:

The particles are multiplying, building up pressure, which caused the can to explode

Particles starting off at room temperature and heating up because of the flame.  The additional heat causes them to move faster and crash together harder until they cause an explosion.

The methane and oxygen particles rise and move upwards during the demonstration, causing the can to explode.  The also expand because of the heat from the flame.

It was really interesting for me to see just how many misconceptions these students have about all sorts of topics.  For example, most groups didn't draw the flame.  When I asked if there was a reason, some told me because flames aren't made of particles.  Some told me that flames are oxygen, which isn't a particle.  Some told me flames are just heat.  One kid told me the flame was made of lighter fluid, and I just transferred it to the can.

Most groups only drew one type of particle, with a very small handful including air or oxygen.  When I asked if the can was made of particles, most told me no, the can was made of metal.

I would say about 50% of the groups said that the particles were multiplying in the can as the demo progressed.  When I asked for evidence to support this idea, some said because the flame was going into the can.

I didn't really have a great "wrap up" for this discussion, expect to tell the students that all groups had some correct ideas and some incorrect ideas.  And I promised them that by the end of the course, they would be able to fully explain why the can exploded.  I also said that chemistry is the study of particles-- particles are what cause everything to behave the way it does.  Through chemistry we can predict what different types of particles will do in different situations.

Yesterday, students took the Chemistry Concepts Inventory.  I haven't even run their answer sheets through the Scantron yet.  I can't imagine their scores are going to be very impressive based on our class discussions thus far.  We also had a lab safety day, which I felt was absolutely imperative before the Mass and Change lab.  Traditionally, I have spent multiple class periods on safety and lab equipment.  This year, I limited it to one day in hopes that I will be able to impress what I didn't cover in detail upon them during the many lab activities and board meetings.

I gave students a worksheet that I have used in the past called Identifying Improper Lab Behavior.  Previously I have used this activity as an evaluation or homework assignment after we have covered safety.  The worksheet has 6 scenarios where students are doing obviously incorrect things.  Students have to read and highlight the unsafe behaviors.  There is also a checklist where students have to match a particular unsafe practice to the scenario(s) where it occurs.

To add a modeling "spin" on the activity, I then had students in groups create a list of laboratory safety rules that would have prevented all of the unsafe behaviors:

We held a board meeting to share and discuss each group's safety rules, then came up with a consensus list of rules for the laboratory to be copied into our laboratory notebooks (which about 2/3 of my students didn't bring to class- I was spoiled last semester with exceptionally responsible students).

Today's original plan was to complete the Mass and Change lab.  But... we had an early dismissal that caused us to be on a modified schedule.  We barely got started on the lab.  On a positive note, the students conducted themselves in an excellent manner in the lab for the short time we were there today.  I was worried after the first day of class that the maturity level of my students was going to be too low for many of the more complicated labs.  But my hope has been (tentatively) renewed after this morning!