When I began the course I did not really work with data in this way. I was always analyzing students grades and making sure they were making progress, but I did not look deeper into what might be causing the issues, if there was one. It really liked working in a team for this class so we were able to see how everyone else analyzed the data and what they used it their classrooms. It was a little difficult because we all lived in different time zone (one of which was a 12 hour difference) but we made that aspect work. It was also difficult because neither of my partners were familiar was Special Ed, which is my focus area. Marcie has never really worked with students with IEPs and Techo actually had to look up what I was talking about because they do not have that in China.
Our exploratory question had to do with homework and Math. Math is not my specialty, I actually am horrible at math. So I relied a lot on my teammates for anything involving that. I also do not really give out homework to my students, overall in with my students I found it more helpful if we completed the homework in class. But after we got into the action plan I realized it was less about math and more about teaching styles.
Our team did meet with our professor in order to make more student center and specific goals. I learned a lot doing this. Making them more student centered still guided the teachers instruction but focused more on student progress. We discussed the importance of being specific, so we are able to measure the growth and to know exactly what type of growth we want to see in the students. I also assumed it was a given that the goals would be given as homework but that was not specific in the goals so when I met with Jennifer in week 5, she did not understand how we were address our exploratory question. I definitely understood what she was saying. We did not really answer our own question. I do feel as though that question would be hard to answer whatever the plan was because there is no way to do so fairly. I do still like the idea of a flipped classroom and that is something I plan to do in my classroom eventually.
I definitely enjoyed this class and learned a lot from it. Here is my Final Data Presentation.
Allison's Blog 