Evidence & Evaluation

Details & Deliverables

Comment & Connect

Evaluation of Goals

Over the course of the unit, I want to increase student motivation, engagement, and independence in class, online, and at home. Students will build skills to question, investigate, and research using a variety of digital tools and the internet, to learn more about science and the world.

Modified Motivated Strategies for Learning Questionnaire (MSLQ)

The MSLQ was developed in 1990 by Pintrich and DeGroot to measure aspects of motivation: self-efficacy, intrinsic value, test anxiety, self-regulation, and use of learning strategies. I modified the survey by adding several questions at the end relating to out-of-school engagement, kept separate for analysis.

I separated the data into the five categories created by Pintrich and DeGroot, and a sixth category of my own questions that speak to academic engagement outside of school. Unfortunately, though I have the data, I have no idea how to represent it in r-values.

Interruption Data

Data was gathered for two weeks prior to the beginning of the unit (blue) and again for two weeks after March Break (red). Any interruption of my small group teaching time counted as an interruption for the purposes of this data. Data without corresponding pre-unit or post-unit points was excluded from the graph as there were no interruptions recorded on snow days.

According to the graph, interruptions are down by 439%. Using all recorded data, interruptions are down by 472%. This is a significant increase in student independence.

Anecdotal Reports

Parents

"Love it! Great job everyone!"
"My daughter absolutely loves this project .. talks about it a lot at home!"
"Love this!"

Students

"I don't know... let's google it."
"Miss Dignan... never mind."
"Actually, I'm going to try this first."
"I can help you!"

Colleagues

"I love it!!!" You're an incredible teacher!"
"Your kids are completely different!"
"This is incredible! I want to be in your class!"

Student Teacher

"This week was very busy, but the first thing I notices was the progress the students made, they are so independent, and need a lot less from me when it comes to help. Before they come to me, I see them problem solve and even ask a peer for help. It is incredible the difference and makes me excited to fully teach them. The students who were having a difficult time last year are well adjusted now and this makes teaching and giving the appropriate attention the students deserve much easier. Athough we have lost our EA’s, I still feel things will run a lot smoother this term."

I did not expect this project to have results as significant as this. Students are noticeably more engaged, motivated, and independent by observers outside the classroom.

Lessons Learned

Worth the Time: Websites

The websites were absolutely worth all the time spent on them. In fact, my goal is to get all the content digitally accessible so that students (and parents!) can access the content at home. Having a single resource that I knew was safe, ad free, and had exactly the content I wanted students to see was a game-changer. It allowed my high-flyers to extend their knowledge and dig deeper into the topics, and my struggling readers had Google ReadWrite to close the gap.

Building my TPCK

Going into this unit, I was confident in my knowledge of technology and pedagogy and recognized that content would be the knowledge area I would grow the most. This holds true; I learned, gathered, and created the most to improve my content knowledge and delivery.

Not Worth It: Individual Daily Differentiation

Who knew creating 26 individual lesson plans, providing and organizing the material, reviewing the 150+ daily submissions would be impossible? Clearly not me when I was designing this unit. Typically I assess in the classroom: observing student progress on similar tasks, having conversations with planned questions, and skimming their daily products. At home, I mark and lesson plan. Due to the incredibly individual nature of this unit, I could not observe all tasks, listened to more conversations than I participated in (which was valuable and something I will keep in my practice), and then had 50-60 video submissions and 100 unique products to review at home. It was impossible to make up for the missed observations and conversations, so the products became disproportionately assessed. I was thankful for the snow days, as without them I would not have been able to keep ahead of the workload I created.

Differentiation, I believe, is why my students were so motivated and able to build more independence. It is important, valuable, and best-practice for students to work on material within their Zone of Proximal Development (Vygotsky, 1978).

Students, therefore, can be grouped to make differentiating more manageable, which will allow me to provide better feedback. I anticipate that with better feedback, students will be able to achieve even more academically and in positive school behaviours such as independence, motivation, and engagement.

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