Social Studies Unit Process- Data Analysis Process Chuck Green - American History Department We started by dividing the

social studies curriculum into several units e.g. Est ablishing English Colonies, Life in Colonies, Road to Revolution, Revolution, Co nfederation to Constitution, American Government, Key Themes 1789-1850, Road to Civil War, Civil War, and Reconstruction. For each of these units we have established essential questions/guiding question s. These serve as my broad higher-level understandings that I wish students to demonstrate proficiency with long after the specific facts of the unit are forgo tten. We then break down the guiding questions into learning targets that defi ne specifically what student s need to master in order to demonstrate an understandi ng of each guiding question. For each guiding question and learning target set, we have created instructional lessons that are principally student centered, collaborative, and project based . This chunking of content enables me to periodically formatively assess student achi evement using conferencing, cps, exit slips etc. as appropriate before moving fu rther into the unit content. The class and individual results determine whether we re-teach content by taking a different approach, or provide individual stude nts with conferencing or alternative activities i.e. information organizer, alte rnative reading, tutoring etc. with each designed to improve their understanding of the content. This process improves the chances that all students that choos e to will be successful on this part of the summative assessment. Repeating this process throughout the unit for each guiding question and learnin g target set ensures a greater likelihood that most students, if they so choose, will be successful on the summative assessment. The summative assessment resul ts that we have provided demonstrate this fact. For example, the 8th grade Life in the Colonies/Early Colonies results show that all classes averaged approxima tely 87% on the assessment. Of the 151 students tested, including IEP students, 95 + students scored above proficient. Only 8 students scored below proficient . We believe this success is due to the formative assessment process, the stude nt -centered, high interest, project based instructional approaches taken with e ach unit of study and reflecting on our instruction made possible by our TBT col laborations. Also note that the test results provided do not reflect scores students have obt ained by the contracting for reassessment opportunities that we provide. All st udents have the opportunity to meet with us and establish together areas of weak ness, and set up an action plan to remediate as needed. Reassessment takes eith er written or oral form depending on the individual student. In many cases, stu dents that wish to improve a proficient or above proficient score on the summati ve assessment can design an Achievement Extension activity that targets key content an d when completed demonstrates that the student has achieved an even higher level of understanding. (With proficient and above proficient scores it is difficult to isolate on any significant student achievement weakness) Also note that each of summative assessments is common and organized by guiding question and associated learning targets. The common summative assessments serv e us in two ways, assuring that all students are getting the necessary content a nd allowing for comparative conclusions in terms of test item reliability and be st instructional practices. The summative assessments organized by guiding ques tion and learning targets enable us to determine with individual students what s pecific parts of the unit gave them trouble and focusing our remediation on thos e weaknesses. (All tests are 25-30 multiple choice with 1 or 2 extended response s, 1 or 2 of the guiding questions)

It is during our TBT meetings that results are analyzed and we can reflect on wh at instructional practices were successful, and which test items had to be impro ved for the following year. This year we have looked back at each of last years TBT meeting notes for the units covered to make sure the instructional or test item change suggestions we made the previous year have been corrected for this y ear.