Vocabulary

Vocabulary

Mona Bazzi

EDU645: Learning & Assessment for the 21st Century

Instructor: Alicia Holland-Johnson

August 14, 2012

Rationale

            In order to assess students’ vocabulary ability, I used the Critchlow Verbal Language.  The Critchlow Verbal Language Scale requires that students have to identify opposites of given words.  I was curious to establish ways students relate terms based on their existing knowledge of words.  These words are not presented in sentences; therefore, students would need to know the meaning of the word in order to provide an antonym of the word.  I would discontinue the testing when students made five consecutive errors.  

            To further assess students’ vocabulary ability; I picked six words a passage from the book Hurry Up, Spider-Man! by Kate Egan. As Kubisyzyn & Borich mentioned,” you may have partially made your decision of what particular test format when you developed your objectives (Kubisyzyn & Borich). This assessment will provide me with information regarding students’ ability to use context clues to define unknown vocabulary words.  Students chose this book from the school library; this book is appropriate for ages 3-7 (students are 7).  I chose the passage on page 6 and selected 6 vocabulary words.  The words I chose were actress, dream, disappoint, promised, show, show-up.  I encouraged students to read the sentence around to the word to define the given word.  Gunning (2010) states that students must have contextual knowledge and knowing definitions alone is not enough for students to understand the passages at hand.  I wanted to learn if students can define unknown words using his contextual knowledge.  

Results

            Using the Critchlow Verbal Language Scale, stduents correctly identified 32 opposites of given words.  There are a total of 75 words, but we stopped at 43 words since they could not identify five consecutive opposite words.  their score of 32 places them in the sixth grade range.  Out of the 32 words they identified, 30 of those words were the exact opposites listed in the assessment.  The words where they did not provide the exact opposites were: for sick they said healthy, and for absent they said everybody’s here.  Some incorrect responses were: for love they said go away, for laugh they said not funny, for heavy they said not heavy, for smooth they said skinny and for friend he said neighbor.  He could not identify opposites for evening, raw, multiply, difficult, narrow and wild.  I discontinued the test after he got five consecutive errors. 

            I chose the words actress, dream, disappoint,  promised, show and show-up from the book Hurry Up, Spider-Man by Kate Egan.  Prior to reading the passage, they did not know what actress, disappoint, and show up meant.  They knew that a dream was what happened when you were sleeping, a promise was something someone said, and a show was something you watch on television.  I had them read the passage first, then I asked them to define what each word meant based on the context around the word.  After reading the passage, they were able to identify what each word meant based on the context around the word.  They did not give me one word answers; rather they provided details about what each word meant.  For example, they defined the word actress by stating, “Actor in a show. She has lines to say-she goes on stage in a theater.”  Mary Jane has dreams of becoming an actress; they defined dream by saying, “She imagines it in her brain-it’s something she really wants to do.”  This explanation fits within the context of the story and therefore yielding a correct response.  When defining disappoint, students said, “Don’t let me be mad at you.  It’s another way of saying being mad.”  This response is correct since he could identify when someone is disappointed, s/he is upset at the actions.  They said that promised means, “Like telling the truth and don’t break a promise-like really doing it.”  They defined show as someone, “goes to the theater and he (Peter Parker) sees her (Mary Jane) on stage.”  Finally, for showed-up he stated, “When she sees him in his seat.”     

Interpretations of Results

            Based on Language Results, I conclude that students understand and can identify opposites.  Although students are in 2^nd grade, their listening vocabulary capacity is 6^th grade.  The students provided opposites quickly meaning that they understand opposites.  For two of the incorrect responses, students added the word “not” in front of the word.  I did not mark these as right answers because I wanted them to use a different word to describe the given word.  However, the fact that they used the word not is an indication that they know that “not” is used when describing opposites. They did not know the opposites for evening or raw; this is an indication that they have not used these words before or that they do not know what they mean.  The fact that they said friend for neighbor is an indication that they know that a neighbor is someone you are familiar with, but they could not identify the opposite (enemy).  Students can associate words with their definitions pretty well since they were able to provide opposites up to sixth grade words.  This stage is defined by Gunning (2010) as associative-definitional knowledge; when students are given a word, they quickly define it in their head and are able to provide an antonym. 

            Initially, I asked students if they knew what actress, dream, disappoint, promised, show and show-up means.  After they read the passage, they were able to change what they thought some of the words meant.  Dream, for example, could have two meanings.  They told me the first meaning prior to reading the passage.  After reading the passage, they changed their mind providing the correct meaning of the word based on the context clues.  This is an indication that students have contextual-conceptual knowledge. This means that students use the context around the word to come up with the correct definition. 

             

Recommendations

            Although students were  able to identify opposites and use context clues to indentify meaning, I’m not sure if they can use words appropriately in speaking and writing (generative knowledge). 

            Another way to build vocabulary is by reading different kinds of texts.  Students would benefit from different reading opportunities.  Students do not really read unless they are required to, so I would suggest that teachers provide students with different reading opportunities such as reading from a magazine, a newspaper, or bibliographies (grade level appropriate, of course).  By providing these reading opportunities, students will learn that reading can be fun and educational at the same time.  In providing the magazines and/or newspapers, students will learn about what is going on in the world as well as build his vocabulary.  Students would also benefit from teacher read aloud.  The teacher could pick books that introduce new vocabulary words.     

References:

Kibuiszyn, T. & Borich,  G. (2012). Educational testing & measurement: Classroom application and practice (9^th ed.). John Wiley & Sons, Inc., Hoboken, NJ. 

Gunning, T.G. (2010). Assessing and correcting reading and writing difficulties (4^th ed.).

Boston:  Allyn

Validity, Reliability, and Accuracy

Mona Bazzi

EDU 645 Learning & Assessment for the 21st Century
Instructor: Alicia Holland-Johnson

Validity, Reliability, and Accuracy Assignment

Select one of the learning outcomes below and draft a hypothetical assessment that supports the outcome (e.g., multiple choice items, essay items, authentic assessment, etc.). Explain how you plan to promote validity and reliability in your assessment, and how your assessment addresses the four categories of sources of error identified in the text, thereby promoting accuracy.

Learning Outcomes
a.  Apply analytical skills and knowledge of literary analysis to reading and writing about poetry. (Literary Research)

.

Name: ________________                                                            Date: ____________________

Fourth Grade

Poetry Comprehension Test

I Build Walls

I build walls:
Walls that protect,
Walls that shield,
Walls that say I shall not yield
Or reveal
Who I am or how I feel.

I build walls:
Walls that hide,
Walls that cover what’s inside,
Walls that stare or smile or look away,
Silent lies,
Walls that even block my eyes
From the tears I might have cried.

I build walls:
Walls that never let me
Truly touch
Those I love so very much.
Walls that need to fall!
Walls meant to be fortresses
Are prisons after all.

Questions:

In this poem, walls are not made of bricks or any physical materials. The author uses “walls” as a metaphor for someone hiding his feelings and thoughts from others and even from himself.

1-      Why would someone build “walls” around his or her feelings?

2-      Do you or others you know, ever build such “walls”?

3-      Does the narrator believe that it’s always a good idea to have these “walls”? How do you know?

4-      Do you think that there are times when we need to “build walls”?

Test Analysis and measurements:

Students are supposed to perform basic understanding:

First:  demonstrate understanding of the literal meaning of a poem through identifying stated information indicating sequence of events, and defining grade level vocabulary

Second: demonstrate comprehension by drawing conclusions; inferring relationships such as cause and effect and identifying theme and poem elements such as paraphrasing the poem, and express the poet’s feelings.

Third: evaluate extend meaning: Demonstrate critical understanding by making predictions; distinguishing between fact and opinion and reality and fantasy, transferring ideas to other situations; and judging author, purpose, point of view and effectiveness.

Fourth: identify reading strategies: demonstrate awareness of techniques that enhance comprehension, such as using existing knowledge, summarizing content, comparing information across texts, using graphics and text structures, and formulating questions that deepen understanding.

As to Language arts

Sixth:  introduction to print: Demonstrate knowledge of sound/symbol and structural relationships in letters, words and signs.

Seventh:  Sentence Structure: Demonstrate an understanding of conventions of writing complete and effective sentences including treatment of subject, and verb, punctuation and capitalization.

Eighth: Writing Strategies: Demonstrate an understanding of information and sources and of the use of main idea of the poem, concluding sentences, connective and transitional words and phrases, supporting elements, sequences of ideas and relevance of information.

Finally:  Editing Skills: Identity the appropriate use of capitalization, punctuations, nouns, pronouns, verbs, adjectives and adverbs in existing texts. The following assessment is a process to evaluate students’ skills in discussing the poet’s theme, main idea and practice comprehension strategies and skills through analyzing and paraphrasing the poem by answering the questions about the poem. Also, students are tested in predicting and sequencing incidents and facts about the poet’s point of view. Further, students are supposed to read the poem carefully in order to understand the author’s aim and identify the hidden meanings he used to get to the main idea. At the beginning the author started his poem by “walls” that has a hidden meaning which is “feelings”. Consequently, students are supposed to assess how the poet presents and discusses alternative perspectives that are related to his opinion about walls.

It is crucial to use correct language skills that is sentence structure, paraphrasing the poem through answering the comprehension questions correctly and discussing the facts and opinion that the poet tried to put across his poems.

                             

References:

Kibuiszyn, T. & Borich,  G. (2012). Educational testing & measurement: Classroom application and practice (9^th ed.). John Wiley & Sons, Inc., Hoboken, NJ. 

Mona Bazzi; Previous Test, Retrieved from; personal notes Marygrove Community College; 2011 Class.

Analyzing and Improving a Test Using Statistics

Mona Bazzi

EDU 645

Learning & Assessment for the 21st Century
Instructor: Alicia Holland-Johnson

Analyzing and Improving a Test Using Statistics

1.      The mean score for each question.

2. The mean score for the entire test.
3. A graph that represents the scores for each question.

	Question 1	Question 2	Question 3	Question 4	Question 5
Student1	2	2	0	2	0
Student2	2	2	0	2	0
Student3	2	0	0	2	0
Student 4	2	2	0	2	0
Student 5	2	2	2	2	2
Student6	2	0	0	2	0
Student 7	2	2	0	2	0
Student 8	0	0	0	2	0
Student9	2	2	0	2	0
Student 10	2	2	0	2	0
Total Possible	2	2	2	2	2

The graph that represents each question:

 

Graphs that represent the scores of each student:

Graphs that represents the scores for each question:

        

           

After reviewing and evaluating the test, there should be certain improvements in students’ learning material, since the results were not so satisfactory. First of all, evaluating the test was the first step that would assist teacher in developing psychology concept and content to students’ understanding. Also, mean calculation and graphic study showed that students faced difficulty in finding answers as if they were guessing. Consequently, results were a good feedback for the teacher to come up with a certain strategy that would support the students in psychology class and intend to achieve more improvement.  

The mean score is the average of the students’ grades. We can get the mean by adding the all grades and then dividing them by the total of the grades and then divide them on the total number of the scores. The grades of the psychology test questions vary. For example, question number 1 has a total of 18 points, number 2 has 14 points, 3 has 2 points, 4 has 20 points, and question number 5 has 2 points. So, the total of all questions is 56. In order to get the average of the whole class is 11.2. So, the mean score of the class is 11.2.

            The teacher’s assumption would be that not all but most of the students would have mastered the objectives and are able to answer the test questions so easy. Thus, the graph and the mean score for the whole class show the contradictory assumption. This conclude the following calculation that represents the sum of the all the scores, 56; and add it to the students’ number; that is 10 students in addition to the numbers of the questions that 5. The mean for the whole class will be adding 56+ 10 + 5 \3 = 23. 6.

The data gathered from the graphs reflects the class scores, as an educator, to figure out whether the students would be considered excellent, average, or underperforming students in psychology class. These averages help me to conclude the student’s status in psychology and the improvement that would take place depending on the research question: How improvements and development would take place?

 The presented data would help to increase focus on the students’ achievement which has brought to the forefront some of the shortcomings of the system of reporting students’ grades. Based on quantitative analysis of the chart, that was calculated by adding all scores and divide them by the total number of the scores, we get the average of each question and students, also the scores were close in average. According to the psychology test results and the data gathered from the scores, it seems that the testing situation indicates that students did poorly in the test, since students 3, 6, and 8 did not study at all and as if they were guessing the answers. While students 1, 2, 4, 7, 9, and 8 were not much sure of their answers since they were on the average level. The difference in grades average shows that the objectives were not attained quietly. Thus, the grades are compared through two groups of students of average and below levels. The mean scores show instability and the test average is considered low level.  

However, the whole reflection had an average of 11.2 which is a low class average. As teachers, we use the average rating of the 10 students to determine the level of reliability of the rating. The students were not able to come up with the right answers and did not master the lesson objectives.  Moreover, the graphs show the relationship between the students’ answers as well as the means and standards differences of the measures. As the table shows that most students did not reflect the class level.

On the other hand, based on the quantitative analysis conducted, whether or not the proposition is correct depends on how the situation is thought about. The information represented shows a clear understanding for the students’ scores and levels. Usually excellent students do well in test questions, the test results also prove that there was only one student who proved that.  Alternatively, I believe to be labeled as “excellent” a student must prove excellence in every question. To be labeled as “underperforming” I believe a student must be weak. However, I don’t think it would be fair to label a student “underperforming” if they are strong in one or two subjects and weak in one or two subjects.  Rather these students should be labeled as “average” along with the students who are doing average in every subject.

Moreover, the fact that the mean of the difference employed was only 1.12.  However, some may argue that if the test is easy to apply and doesn’t cost a large amount of money to implement even a minimal amount of improvement is better than nothing in the education of a child. Teachers should also use the test results to improve instruction and to improve the test itself. Checking the results with students and do a warm up in class, gives good feedback to students, helps evaluate instructional quality, and assists in the preparation of better future tests. Furthermore, motivating students would support them in achieving psychology classroom objectives. Also, positive comments would satisfy the students’ determination to get good grades through focusing on the material of study.

In conclusion, the test scores are low and the test level is below. As a teacher, should examine different learning styles to have students catch up psychology objectives and implement more sample tests that would make a different in the students’ learning for this course. Also, grades increase or decrease students’ intention and encouragement to learn. As educators, we have to enhance students’ learning ability through increasing their interest in psychology class by implementing more activities, relating psychology to our daily experience, and inventing a clear grading system.

 

References:

Evaluating the Test Results; Retrieved from. www.eric.ed.gov

ERIC Web Portal;  You +1'd this publicly. Undo

By T Crotty  

Analysis of a Rubric for Assessing Depth of Classroom Reflections; Retrieved from www.theijep.com

Tony N. Docan, “Journal of Scholarship of Teaching and Learning”, Vol. 6, No2, October 2006.

Kibuiszyn, T. & Borich,  G. (2012). Educational testing & measurement: Classroom application and practice (9^th ed.). John Wiley & Sons, Inc., Hoboken, NJ.