Lindy Newman

EDUC 354/358
Theresa Koob
1 Dec 2014
What Difference Does Instruction Make?
INTRODUCTION
Ask anybody who has taken a class in their life, from 9th grade Algebra I to downhill skiing the
quality of instruction can vastly impact the quality of the experience. Good instruction involves, among
other things, being patient with your students, supporting them through the harder concepts, and
showing them that you believe in their ability to learn; above all, good instruction allows students to
learn something. In this project, I explored the difference my instruction made on the learning of 50 high
school sophomores in General Biology at Whitehall-Yearling High School.
My classes at Whitehall-Yearling High School were very diverse. I had a handful of ELL students,
particularly from Spanish-speaking or East African countries, in each class. There was also a number of
IEPs scattered across the classes, but my cooperating teacher was not given copies of all IEPs, so the
exact number is not known. My cooperating teacher had been teaching for 14 years at WYHS, and was
fairly burnt out from high school students. She was very traditional in her teaching style; to her, a wellrunning classroom had students in their seats and quiet while she lectures or they do a worksheet from
the book. In my school day, there were 3 periods of Biology: 1st and 4th period were IS2 (Integrated
Science 2 General Biology), and 2nd period was Honors Biology. The Honors Biology class was slightly
accelerated in that they got more lecture notes and worksheets, and occasionally got to design the
procedure for their own labs, but there was not very much difference between their class and the
General Biology class.

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METHODS
To collect data about student progress, I used a pre- and post-test over chapter 3, Cell Structure
and Function. The test was ten questions, with one or two questions coming from each section of the
upcoming chapter. I administered the pre-test at the beginning of class on the first day of the unit, and
again the day after the chapter 3 exam. There were 47 participating students in total: 13 from 1st period,
19 from 2nd period, and 15 from 4th period. These numbers exclude all students who were not present
on either testing day, did not complete both sides of the test, or did not put their name on one or both
of the tests (and thus could not have their pre- and post-test scores matched). I compared each
students scores by subtracting the pre-test score from the post-test score, then analyzed the data from
the students score change.
The instruction that the students received closely followed the Holt McDougal Biology, Ohio
Edition, textbook. A typical lesson consisted of lecturing on the first day, a worksheet after the lecture,
and then some sort of activity or another worksheet the next day (a sample lesson plan can be found in
Appendix A). Most of the supplemental materials (powerpoint presentations, worksheets, etc.) were
from the textbook manufacturer. There were five lessons in total, as well as a review game for the exam
at the end.
DATA ANALYSIS & REPORT
In each class, there was some change in student learning. Overall, the students averaged an
improvement of 1.6 points from the pre-test to the post-test. Among all classes, the ratio of students
who did not show improvement (or even regressed in their scores) to students who did improve was
1:2.4 that is, for every one student that did not improve at all, there were more than two who did
improve. Period 1 showed the smallest amount of improvement, with an average gain between tests of
only 0.2 points and a ratio of 1:1.2 (almost equal numbers of students improved as did not improve).
The highest gain in scores was found in the period 2 Honors Biology class. The students showed an

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average improvement of 2.7 points between the pre- and post-test, and for every student that did not
improve, there were 3.8 students who did show improvement. Finally, period 4 landed in between the
last two classes. They improved by an average of 1.3 points, and their ratio of stagnant or regressed
scores to improved scores was 1:2.8.
Although the improvement between pre- and post-test scores was clearly visible, the scores
themselves were low. Even after the unit, the average post-test score across all classes was 5.8, or 58%
a failing grade according to Whitehall-Yearlings grading scale. The scores on the summative assessment
were even poorer than this, averaging around 40%.
Personally, I have my doubts about how much students actually retained. During the unit, I
would frequently relate topics from one chapter to material that we had covered in the last chapter.
More often than not, I was met with blank stares when asking students if they remembered a concept
from the previous lesson. During temperature checks (students hold up either thumbs-up, thumbs-

Pre- and Post-Assessment Scores from 10th

Grade Biology at Whitehall-Yearling High School
8.0
7.0
6.0
Points

5.0
4.0

Pre-test

3.0

Post-test
Change

2.0
1.0
0.0
1

Total

Period

Figure 1. Assessment data showing the change in pre- and post-test scores as related to the scores
themselves. See Appendix B for raw data.

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down, or in between to indicate how well theyre grasping the material) students would give me
thumbs-up, but if I called on them and asked them to explain in their own words the process of osmosis,
they could not do it. In the next unit, I could hardly get students to remember what a chloroplast was or
how diffusion works.
In a traditional class, one will encounter many different ability levels and learning styles. I
selected three students to represent three levels of the learning process: emerging learners, proficient
learners, and exemplary learners. My emerging learner, ND, improved his score from a 1 to a 3
throughout the course of the lesson. ND moved to Ohio from Ethiopia very recently and has been
working with the schools ELL department to gain traction on his English skills. He does his assignments
on time and is diligent about keeping up with homework, but language forms such a steep barrier that
his test grades suffer despite the work he puts out. His exam score as well as his post-test scores were
poor, indicating that he did not really get a grasp on the material (or at least did not have the reading
skills to adequately represent his knowledge on a test). My proficient learner, AK, has been in the
Whitehall schools for most of her life. She is in the Honors class and will do her work with direction, but
is chatty and needs constant reminders to stay on task. Her score improved from a 2 to a 6, which was
right around average for the rest of her period 2 class. My third example, an exemplary learner, was GR.
Like AK, GR is very social, but she knows when to buckle down and complete her work. Her exam scores
and her understanding demonstrated through class discussions indicate that she studies outside of class
as well. GRs score improved from a 5 to a 10 throughout the unit.
DISCUSSION & REFLECTION
Overall, I would not say that I had a dramatic impact on student learning. Almost one-third of
students who took the test either did not improve or regressed in their scores, and many of the students
who improved dramatically between their pre- and post-test did poorly on the worksheets and chapter
test combined with the low number of questions, this leads me to wonder how much of the students

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improvement was due to changed ability and how much was due to guessing. More qualitatively, I feel
like students understood the material poorly. As was discussed previously, there was more rote
memorization of sentences from the textbook than there was actual learning happening in the
classroom. Most students could not take a sentence they had just read and put it in their own words,
which indicates lack of understanding.
The reasons for this are incredibly varied and nebulous. From middle school on, students at
Whitehall often receive guided notes and are never held to a standard of note-taking when being
directly taught information from a presentation. The students in my class, instead of prioritizing and
rewording information, would frantically copy down every word on the slide and not worry about
comprehension or efficiency. They would look back at their notes with confusion afterwards, which
made the notes poor study tools. Also, from the beginning, my cooperating teacher established an
unwelcoming culture in her classroom. The teacher was clearly reluctant to teach, so students were
equally reluctant to learn; this climate made it very difficult to dredge up student enthusiasm for the
content I was teaching. Within this already challenging environment, I also had areas where I could have
done things better. My cooperating teacher leaned heavily on the textbook for her instructional
practices, and because she wanted all of her classes to remain consistent in the style of instruction they
were receiving, she did not want me to deviate too much from the textbook either. However, I could
have pushed her for more exciting classroom activities. In the unit following this one, we did several labs
at my request, and I wish I would have asked to do labs earlier to get the students interested. Another
biology teacher was soaking gummy bears in solutions of different tonicities to demonstrate osmosis,
and I should have done a similar activity with my class to get them interested in the material.
Although the classroom culture I came into was negative, I think I created my own small
bubble of positive culture within the classroom. When students asked me questions or had requests, I
tried my best to answer them genuinely and with care, to undo some of the negativity my cooperating

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teacher had instilled. When I treated them with respect, they (mostly) showed me respect as well.
During the lectures, I tried to bounce around the room and talk about real-life examples and scenarios
to make the presentation slightly less dry a tactic that helped keep several students on task.
Ultimately, I tried to make the best of the environment that was given to me. Although I may not have
made the most difference in the quantity of their grade points, I like to think I made a difference in the
quality of their instructional experience.
CONCLUSION
Overall, my students did not make the great strides in knowledge that I was hoping for. Though
each class made slight progress from the pre-test to the post-test, the scores themselves still remained
low and students did not clearly demonstrate retention of the material. After nine years of being primed
to go through the motions of schooling without much thought to whether or not they actually
understood, progress comes in small increments. But, however disheartening this data may have been, it
does not tell the whole story. During my field experience, I walked through photosynthesis with a girl
who thought she was never going to understand science, and got her to say Oh, that wasnt so hard
after all. I gave out a single sticker for a single exam grade above 80%, and got to see the recipient an
ELL student with emerging English skills light up with excitement when he found out it was his. On my
last day, I got hugs, invitations to band concerts, and even the announcement of my departure written
on the whiteboard with a sad face scrawled next to it. Although my instruction did not make the
bottom-line, data-driven difference that I was hoping for, I believe it impacted the quality of the
students learning experience in ways I was not quite expecting.