Student Analysis

Most students will have a hard time understanding sentence diagramming at first glance.
It is crucial for students to understand the elements required to create a sentence. In order to
grasp the big picture and enjoy the entire painting students need to understand what goes into
each stroke of the paint brush. In order to make this lesson more relatable to the students I will
ask them to imagine something with layers for example a hamburger. I will ask what the essential
parts of a hamburger consist of (bun & meat), and then talk about how everything else are just
add-ons or modifiers. I will then introduce the horizontal diagram with the vertical line. The left
side represents the bun and the right side represents the meat. Everything extra branches off of
these two parts. Understanding basic sentences will help students improve their writing and
grammar usage. Parts of speech need to be determined to understand which words modify which
(for example adverbs and verbs- adjectives and nouns) throughout the lesson mini lessons or
reminders should take place to help students remember parts of speech that they already should
have learned.
I think that this lesson was a good eye-opener to what parts of speech need to be retaught. While there were a handful of students who got all seven parts of speech definitions
correct, the majority of the students did not. Understanding parts of speech is a basic skill of
being a fluent English speaker. Students who plan to attend college need to know the difference
between a pronoun and an adjective while they may not need to know how to diagram the first
sentence to the Constitution. I think that a future lesson for this class would be to go into parts of
speech in more detail and possibly assign group presentations or something to get these seniors
in high school ready for college. Data from Pre and post-tests-

Summary of individual student performance on assessmentsIt was interesting to see the spectrum of pre and post test scores. One thing that I am
proud of is that every single student improved from the pre-test to the post-test. After looking at
the post-tests a majority of the class still had trouble with sentence diagramming. The next day I
gave them their tests back and I went through how to diagram a sentence again to make sure they
knew how to before moving on. Student 9 did exceedingly well on the pre-test and scored a
100% on the post test. I feel that this is because she pays attention and participates in class
discussions. If she has questions about the content I am teaching she takes time to come and ask
me to help her before and after school. Student 5 scored average on the pre-test in respect with
the rest of the class, but did much better on the post-test scoring a 12 out of 17. This particular
student hadnt the slightest idea how to diagram a sentence. After realizing this from the pre-test
I made sure she understood how to do it before the post-test. Student 13 only received 4 out of 17
on his pre-test and 8 out of 17 on his post-test. I feel that this is because he missed a lot of classes
and wasnt able to grasp all of the content needed to do well on the test. I talked to him after I
handed them back and told him he could retake the test if he wanted but he chose not to.
(Refer to Appendix C for student work.)
Sub-group assessment
I decided to use gender as a sub group specification. Students 1-12 are females and 13-26
are males. The females had a higher average score of 5.3 on the pre-test compared to the males
3.3. Both averages were very low and while I expected them to have difficulty I did not realize
many of them did not know some of the basic literary devices such as adjectives and nouns, keep
in mind this is a senior class. While this was not a unit assessment more of a lesson assessment it
allowed me to grasp what the students already knew about sentence structure. Because the
overall unit focuses on a reader response it is hard to assess through a point system exactly what
they needed help with. The post average for the females was 12.1 compared to the males
average of 11.0. The females scored better because they seemed to be a little more motivated to
learn the material. While doing small class activities they seemed more determined to think of
ways to remember specific terms and concepts while many of the males worked hard there were
a few who seemed to be thinking and discussing other things.
Explanation on how evidence from assessments supports or contradicts pre-test, post-test,
formative/ summative assessments related to student learning.For the most part each of the students were very active during the formative assessments
and class activities. There were a few students who elected to talk about things outside of class
during small group projects and were slow to turn in their assignments allowing other students
who were already finished time to get off task as well. I believe the majority of the students
learned the basic idea of how to diagram sentences but didnt really care to put forth a full effort
in understanding different concepts. The evidence from the summative assessment shows that
although mans of the students didnt seem to put forth much effort they still learned more than
they knew at the beginning of the class period.
Explanation on how assessment data is used to draw conclusions about the learning of all
students through the evaluation of student performance on objectives.-

The biggest benefit in grading the assessments is seeing that every single student improved.
I know it would be much harder to draw a conclusion about the overall effectiveness of the
lesson and the assessment if some of the students did worse on the post- test than on the pre-test.
While I would make note that many students could have performed better in the post-test it is
hard to measure or explain what could have been done to make them perform even better.
However, seeing that an overall improvement did take place it is fair to say that the lesson
objectives were met.
Discussion on the assessment instruments to determine the validity of questions used in
assessments to measure student learning.For this specific lesson I created my own assessment. I wanted to incorporate parts of
speech along with three basic sentences for the students to diagram. I looked online and used
other resources to try to find a basic test that consisted of those two elements but had no luck. I
think it was fairly easy for me to create this simple test using basic computer skills. However, in
the future I think it will be much more resourceful to find lesson plans with assessments already
included. I will say that if I feel that my future students need more practice in certain areas I will
not shy away from creating my own assessments.
Evaluation of student learning relating to core standards and objectives.Copies of completed student assessmentsMy objectives for this lesson were:
Students will analyze the structure of a sentence (basic parts of speech, nouns, pronouns,
adjectives, etc.).
Students will dissect sentences to understand the essential parts of a complete sentence and how
modifiers add to a sentence.
Most students were not familiar with sentence diagramming whatsoever and after the 30 minute
lesson could diagram simple sentences consisting of a subject predicate and a few sentence
modifiers. Also many students had difficulty with the parts of speech and as we went through the
lesson I was able to cover each of the seven parts of speech. Most students showed an
improvement on the post-test especially with the parts of speech section of the assessment.