Quantitative Evidence
My students take a Literacy Interim Assessment (IA) four times a year, at the end of each academic quarter. The IA is a teacher-created, multiple choice assessment that tests student mastery on the literacy Tennessee Academic Standards, which include reading literature (RL), reading informational texts (RI) and language (L). For the purposes of this section, I will be analyzing the RL portion of the assessment, as those are the standards I am assigned to teach in 7th grade. My students have a separate reading and writing class, wherein I as the reading teacher cover all RL standards and the writing teacher covers the RI and L standards. Because the IA is taken at the end of each academic quarter, I am able to measure my students’ progress over the course of the year and plan each following quarter based on their strengths and weaknesses on the assessment.
Grade 7 interim Assessments
My students have taken the following interim assessments during the 2018-2019 school year:
The Quarter 1 Interim Assessment, left, was taken by all 7th grade students on October 2, 2018.
The Quarter 2 Interim Assessment, below to the left, was taken by all 7th grade students on December 12, 2018.
The Quarter 3 Interim Assessment, below to the right, was taken by all 7th grade students on March 5, 2019.
Each interim assessment has been annotated to display the correct answer choice, as well as a breakdown showing the percentage of all 7th grade students who chose each answer choice. This data is broken down in more detail in the section below.
Students who took this test recorded their answers on Scantron bubble sheets, and none of the assessments included a writing portion. For this reason, there are no student-created exemplars to display in this section.
Scoring
There are two goals of the interim assessments:
To inform curriculum and standard focus per quarter
To project growth and master on the Tennessee Comprehensive Assessment Program (TCAP) and Northwest Evaluation Association's (NWEA) Measurement of Academic Progress (MAP) assessments
In order to more accurately measure, predict, compare, and project that growth throughout the year, I converted the TCAP cut scores — which determine whether a student is below basic, basic, proficient, or advanced — into percentages. This allows me to interpret my IA data based on the four levels my students will be held to when taking their end-of-year assessments.
To the left, I have included the TN Department of Education’s guide to their cut scores and levels of performance. Each level can be broken down as follows:
Level 1 – Below Grade Level (Below Basic)
Level 2 – Approaching Grade Level (Basic)
Level 3 – On Track (Proficient)
Level 4 – Mastered (Advanced)
Students testing at levels 3 or 4 qualify as at or above grade level, while students testing at level 1 fall into the remedial category.
Using the data in the chart to the bottom let, I was able to convert number of correct score ranges into each level category. 7th grade reading and language arts students testing at or above grade level should score 43% or above on the IA, while students scoring below 29% on the IA are not on track to meet the grade level requirements.
In the next section, I analyze the score charts of each IA according to this scoring method.
Data & Analysis: OVerall mastery
Each score quarter’s interim assessment score graph has been provided to the right, complete with annotated indicators of the cut score level. The overall scores include all reading and language arts standards, including RL, RI, and L.
Quarter 1 Interim Assessment
Students started the year strong, scoring high on their Q1 IA after only 8 weeks of instruction (right, page 1). 105 students took this exam, scoring an average of 63%. Students were divided into their levels as follows:
Level 1 – 3 students, or approximately 3% of the 7th grade class
Level 2 – 15 students, 15%
Level 3 – 9 students, 9%
Level 4 – 76 students, 73%
In quarter 1, 81% of 7th grade students were scoring at or above grade level, with only 3% scoring below basic.
Quarter 2 Interim Assessment
Student IA scores took a sharp decline in Q2 after 16 weeks of instruction (right, page 2). 102 students took this exam, scoring an average of 50%. While this negative growth was disheartening to see in December, I was able to use this data to strongly inform my curriculum for the second semester, which included slowing down our novel studies and concentrating on higher-level analysis questions. Students had read two novels between the Q1 and Q2 IA, and in doing so, I had not been crafting enough standards-driven questions to prepare students for success on a multiple choice exam. Students level ranges for the Q2 IA were as follows:
Level 1 – 8 students, 8%
Level 2 – 21 students, 21%
Level 3 – 26 students, 26%
Level 4 – 46 students, 45%
Quarter 2 saw 71% of students testing at or above grade level, with 8% scoring below basic.
Quarter 3 Interim Assessment
In quarter 3, after approximately 24 weeks of instruction, I began to see steady growth (right, page 3). 104 students scored an average of 60% and grew an average of +10% from their Q2 to Q3 interim assessments. This was a direct result of more intentional, standards-based questioning and analysis on a single novel and imbedded informational texts. This data pushed me to increase the rigor of questioning in quarter 4. Level ranges for the Q3 IA are as follows:
Level 1 – 10 students, 10%
Level 2 – 15 students, 14%
Level 3 – 21 students, 20%
Level 4 – 58 students, 57%
By the end of quarter 3, 77% of students were testing at or above grade level, with 10% scoring below basic.
This chart shows a side-by-side comparison of students testing below basic, approaching grade level, and either at or above grade level. All year, the majority of students have been testing at or above grade level, showing dramatic academic growth from 6th grade.
Data & Analysis: Mastery per standard
As stated earlier in this section, I am responsible for teaching all of the reading literature (RL) standards in my 7th grade reading class. Below is the mastery data per RL standard from each interim assessment.
RL.7.3 – Students grew from 63% mastery in Q1 to 66% mastery in Q3.
Students experienced steady growth with this standard, which analyzes how and why characters and themes develop over the course of a text. Students’ understanding declined in Q2, when we were reading novels more quickly. After spending Q3 analyzing fewer characters over a longer period of time and at a more rigorous level, students experienced growth on their final IA.
RL.7.4 – Students grew from 75% mastery in Q1 to 88% mastery in Q3.
There has been a steady growth in this standard all year because of my emphasis on vocabulary instruction, which does not require students to memorize definitions but rather to interpret words and phrases as they are used in a text.
RL.7.5 – Students grew from 0% mastery to in Q1 to 54% mastery in Q3.
Early in the year, students struggled most with RL.7.5, which requires them to analyze the structure of texts, such as how specific paragraphs contribute to the overall meaning. I prioritized this standard in quarters 2-3, ensuring students were tested in a multiple-choice, standards-aligned format weekly. Analyzing a text written in a parallel storyline was a pivotal reason my students were able to experience such dramatic growth on this standard.
RL.7.6 – Students grew from 60% mastery in Q1 to 66% mastery in Q3.
Quarter 2 saw the highest levels of mastery for RL.7.6, which requires students to evaluate point of view. This made sense because students had to analyze several points of view in multiple texts in Quarter 2. While mastery of this standard did decline in Q3, overall, students experienced growth by 6% from the beginning of the year.
It is clear from this comparison, that students were scoring higher on the RL standards than the overall scores. In eliminating the RI and L standards, which are taught in another class by a different teacher, students showed the following standards mastery each quarter:
Q1 – 50%
Q2 – 60%
Q3 – 70%
This data shows that under my direct instruction, my students have experienced consistent, dramatic academic growth on the RL standards, growing an average of 10% each quarter. With this data, it is safe to project that my students will be at 80% mastery of the RL standards by the end of the school year, testing above grade level.
Individual Examples of dramatic academic growth
Because all 7th grade students participate in the interim assessments at the end of each quarter, I am able to consistently track the growth of all of my students and adjust my lesson planning and remedial instruction accordingly. Below is a cumulative list of all 7th grade students who took the fall 2018 MAP, the Q1 IA, the Q2 IA, and the Q3 IA. I have selected five students at varying academic levels to showcase their dramatic academic growth over the course of the year. These students were chosen to showcase a wholistic snapshot of the 7th grade class – each student comes from a different reading block. Regardless of their prior knowledge or instructional background, each of these students experienced dramatic academic growth under my direct instruction this year.
Flip through the pages below for a more detailed look at each highlighted student.
Reflection
I have effectively utilized the data collected from each interim assessment to inform and drive my curriculum planning and lesson execution to meet the needs of all students over the course of the year. I not only analyze the overall mastery of student performance on a literacy exam, but more specifically the RL standards that I am responsible for focusing on in my class. By identifying students trending upwards or down, I am able to differentiate and scaffold my instruction per class period and student. Because of being data responsive in this way, my students have experienced dramatic academic growth in the 2018-19 school year, setting them up for success as they look toward 8th grade and high school.