Contextual Information

A) My school district is located in a town of 3,000 people. The district serves nearly the entire
county from pre-Kindergarten to twelfth grade. The school district also offers a technical center.
The Missouri Department of Elementary and Secondary Education states that the our school
district has approximately 1,700 students, where 62.9% of the students served qualify for free or
reduced lunch.
B) I teach at the only middle school in district. Our middle school serves grades 5 through 8 and
has 520 students. The free and reduced lunches rate in our building is 64.3 percent. The ethnicity
of the school is predominately Caucasian at 95.6 percent, whereas Hispanic is 1 percent, and
African-American is at 0.8 percent.
C) At my school, the average years of teaching experience is 13.1 years. The school has six fifth
grade teachers, six sixth grade teachers, four seventh grade teachers, and four eighth grade
teachers. There are 11 specials teachers, four paraprofessionals, and four special education
teachers. The diversity of the staff in the school is 100% Caucasian teachers. The teaching style
of staff is more diverse, some teachers lecture, while other teachers use inquiry based learning
techniques. My school does offer opportunities for leadership roles within the teaching staff,
some include: PLC Leadership Team, Standards-Based Grading committee, Student Assist Team,
school representative on the district calendar committee, and scheduling committee.
1.1.1 Identifying the Problem
A) The problem I have identified is the lack of student growth in the seventh grade mathematics
classroom at my school. When reflecting on problems, I realized that our school is headed in the
direction of focusing on "Assessment Capable Learners," and showing student growth is an
important piece of this process. Also, our state is focusing more on student growth from year to
year, and not focused on each students cumulative test score every year. Since the state and our
building are moving towards focusing on student growth, so should my classroom. The problem
with a lack of growth in my classroom impacts teaching because I will have to adjust some
classroom procedures. In the new unit, the procedure will include a Pre-Test and a Post-Test;
this will allow each student to compare their knowledge before the unit to their knowledge after
the unit. One example of how this impacts student learning is that students will have the
opportunity to visualize their growth from the beginning of the unit to the end of the unit.
Another example of how this impacts student learning is students are able to set goals after the
Pre-Test. The students are motivated and strive to grow from their score on the Pre-Test, which
impacts the effort put forth by the students and that directly effects student learning.
B) The evidence that influenced me in choosing this problem was the test scores from our state
standardized test. The results are shown in the Artifact. When analyzing the data from the
artifact, I discovered that 61% of our seventh grade students scored basic or below basic on the
2015 state standardized test. This is a significant problem because according to our
Comprehensive School Improvement Plan (CSIP), we shouldnt have a majority of our students
scoring this low on our standardized test. Our goal is to have more than 50% of the students
scoring proficient or advanced, and when analyzing the data, we only had 39% of our students

scoring in that category. When reflecting on the collected data, I discerned that the
underachieving test scores were connected to the instructional practices of my classroom. After
this discovery, research was done to find effective instructional practices for student growth. It
became evident that there was no observation of student growth in my classroom. Previously,
the students would learn and study a whole unit centered on a topic, then take a summative test
over all the content. Changing this is important to the teaching and learning process because this
method is not an effective practice. A student needs to visualize the content they are learning
next so they understand the expectations of what to learn in the upcoming unit. Comparing prior
knowledge to newly gained knowledge is a motivating factor to students.
C) The result that I anticipate to happen when I address the lack of student growth in my
classroom is that student achievement will increase. Students will have a better understanding of
every math concept we cover in seventh grade because of the new instructional practices. The
evidence will be measured by showing exceptional growth from the Pre-Test to the Post-Test.
My goal is for each student to increase their score according the "Halfway to 100" target, which
is calculated from the scores of the Pre-Test: # correct + (# wrong / 2). Using instructional
practices that focus on student growth will affect student learning by increasing the achievement
of each student.
1.2.1 Research
A) The research I conducted involved using a university library textbooks and their subscription
to educational journals. I researched many prestigious educational leaders, for example, Guskey,
Hattie, and Marzano. I even studied how the brain learns mathematics by Dr. Sousa. A full list
of each textbook or educational journal can be found clicking this link. All this research
information guided me towards implementing new classroom procedures. When reflecting and
analyzing all this new information, the summary I gathered from each text piece is that using
Pre-Test data and formative assessment data to guide instruction leads to an increase of student
growth observed by Post-Test data. From all this research, I implemented some new procedures
in my classroom. The first new strategy was to have a pre-summative assessment. The new
strategy means that the students take the summative test before starting the unit; this gives the
students data to look back on after they learn all the material from the unit. Another new
procedure will be to fill out a "Student Growth Plan." The plan has the student consider their
pre-assessment score and each student decides on a goal of how much they plan to grow from the
pre-assessment to the post-assessment. During the unit, the students take weekly quizzes, or
formative assessments, to check comprehension; each quiz score will be graphed on the "Student
Growth Plan." Once the unit is over, the students will take the post-summative assessment.
Then, the students compare their pre-assessment results to their post-assessment results to
discover how much growth they had in the time span of the unit. The students will also refer
back to their "Student Growth Plan" to analyze their results and examine if they reached the goal
they set for the post-assessment score. All 123 of my seventh grade students participated in the
research.
B) The school resources I used to conduct my research was mainly technological. I utilized a
local universitys library to obtain access to textbooks and educational journals. Also, I used my

personal computer in my room and the schools copy machine to print the materials I needed.
Our district does not have a high focus on technology, so all of the students work, from the
assessments to the "Student Growth Plan," is written on paper. This highly affected the
development of the plan because if I did not have the technology to create and print the
documents, I could not have followed through with my plan. Also, I used my schools building
for the research since the research and analysis took place in classrooms at the school. This
affected the development of the plan because I could implement the plan and analyze the results
after school.
C) The culture of our state affected the development of the plan. Our state is implementing a
new growth plan that schools will be using called "Student Learning Outcomes" (SLO). In my
school, we are implementing the SLO process at every grade level. Once a year, we have to
track our pre and post-assessment scores and meet certain student growth measures over a unit.
Since this will be a yearly process in our building and a state required practice, researching best
practices and implementation of increasing student growth in my classroom was important
information to learn. Another influence came from the community our school district belongs to.
The parents and stakeholders of the community want to see our students be successful and be
active members in the community.
1.2.2 Developing the Plan
A) The plan I have developed is attached.
The plan and implementation of increasing student growth in my classroom aligns with our
Comprehensive School Improvement Plan (CSIP). Increasing student growth in my classroom
corresponds to the following CSIP goal in the school district:
1. Academic Performance - Goal 2: The district will increase student achievement each
year as demonstrated by increasing the numbers of students in the top two levels of achievement
on standardized testing in ELA, math and science or all students in targeted subgroups,
specifically, special education and low socioeconomic subgroups.
The plan formulated for the research conducted, as described in 1.2.1, also includes goals that
need to be achieved. One goal of implementing the plan is for each student to grow from the
Pre-Test to the Post-Test. As described earlier, each students goal is to reach the Halfway to
100 score on their Post-Test, which differs for each individual student. I want 80% of the
students to obtain or exceed their Halfway to 100 score on the Post-Test. Another goal from
implementing the plan is for 51% or more of seventh grade students to score proficient or
advanced on the 2016 state standardized test.
B) The timeline for each step of the plan begins with the first team meeting on November 11,
2015. This meeting will begin the conversation of implementing new procedures to show
student growth in my classroom. We will discuss the conclusions made from the research,
discuss implementing the pre-and post-test data strategy, discuss the Student Growth Plan, and
have an open discussion about how we can effectively implement these strategies in the seventh
grade mathematics classroom. This date was selected because this is our Professional Learning
Communities (PLC) days, in which faculty get together to collaborate. The next two meetings

were held on November 18 and December 9. We will meet again during PLC time and discuss
the pre-test data and how to use the information to guide instruction, and effective intervention
strategies. On December 9, we will discuss the effectiveness of the intervention strategies. The
final step of the plan will be to meet on Wednesday, December 16; the team will analyze the
students pre and post-assessment scores. This is our last PLC meeting of the school year and the
post-summative assessments are finished, which is why this day is a good day to meet.
C) To help develop my plan, I included my principal, the eighth grade math teacher, and the
seventh and eighth grade technology teacher. I selected my building principal to be on my team
because he is the administrator of the whole building and he makes the final decision of what
happens in my classroom. Also, he was included because he has completed his doctorate in
grading practices. His role will be to provide guidance and implement wisdom with my new
classroom procedures. I selected the eighth grade mathematics teacher because he is the other
mathematics teacher in the junior high portion of our building and he is also conducting the same
research as I am in his classroom. He can assist the team by helping grade the pre and post-test
assessments and assist in analyzing the gathered data. The junior high technology teacher was
selected to be on the team to assist in direction of implementing these new strategies since he is a
veteran teacher of the building with 13 years. His role will be to help guide implementing new
strategies and assisting with technological issues.
D) Using effective strategies for communication was vital to our group and implementing the
plan. The first strategy was to contact each parent by email to inform them about the new
procedures taking place. The parents did not need to sign a consent form or agree to some new
practice, but I just felt the parents at home should be aware and updated on what is happening in
the classroom. The rationale for contacting the parents in this method was because I can send
out a great deal of information to each parent through our schools information system by email.
Then, they can email or call me to ask individual questions if they wanted more information. I
did receive two phone calls from parents, not to ask questions, but to say they appreciated the
communication. Another communication strategy I used to communicate the plan was face to
face communication with the staff in my building. The rationale for face to face contact was
because we meet all together as a staff on a weekly basis and this was a good opportunity to
address each teacher. I informed them of the plan because I wanted any teacher that was
interested in my research and wanted to implement these strategies in their classroom to feel
welcome to observe my class or ask me any questions.
E) The overall goal of the plan is to show student growth in my classroom. I plan to assess if I
have shown student growth in my classroom by analyzing each students pre-test and compare
the results to their post-test. The rationale for analyzing the pre-and post-tests is because this
will clearly show me student growth in my classroom. I will be able to assess a students
knowledge prior to learning new material with the pre-test. Then, after each new concept is
taught to the student, theyll take the post-test. Again, I will assess the students knowledge.
After this, I will be able to compare the students work and determine if the student has shown
growth in their mathematical knowledge. My goal is that 80% of the students have meet or
exceeded their Halfway to 100 score on the Post-Test. The last goal I hope to achieve is an

increase of proficient and advanced scores on the state standardized test. The goal is to have
51% or more students achieving the proficient or advanced scores.
1.3.1
A) To support the implementation of my plan, I worked with my team to discuss the most
effective ways to introduce new classroom procedures. We decided that informing the students
about how the research that I have studied has led me to implement these new classroom
procedures. The first new procedure will be to take the pre-summative assessment before
starting the new unit. The team felt an important piece of information to tell the students was
that the pre-test is not for a grade, this is just to analyze and understand their prior content
knowledge. Then, I walked the students through how to fill out the Student Growth Plan after
the Pre-Test. I informed the students that the Student Growth Plan was to guide their learning
during the new unit to reach their desired growth on the post-test (Halfway to 100 score) and
to show them how they have grown from the beginning of the unit.
B) I included the following groups in my implementation:
My Team: I included the team about my implementation of the plan because they were a very
important part of adjusting the plan to make it work well with my students. I included them with
weekly updates in email form to let them know how the Student Growth Plan was helping guide
students to their desired goal of growth.
Students: This research is focused on student growth, so of course every seventh grade student
that I teach will be included in the implementation of the new classroom strategies. I included
them by informing them of the research I was conducting and of the new classroom procedures.
Administration: My building assistant principal was not included on my team, but I did want to
keep him informed of the implementation as well because he conducts walkthrough observations
in my classroom. Since he will be in my classroom every few weeks, I wanted to notify him of
the procedural changes so he was not surprised and he could give me any constructive criticism
about the implementation during our formal meetings after the walkthrough. I informed him
through face to face communication in his office during my plan period.
C) As you can see from above, the communication strategies I used with these individuals were
face to face and weekly email updates. The rationale for the weekly emails was to keep
everyone on the team up to date and informed about the progress of implementing the plan and
reminders of when we will be meeting each time. This weekly form of communication often
opened up important conversations amongst the group, whether it was positive words from group
members or ideas on adjusting the new classroom procedures to better fit the students. The
rationale behind using face to face communication with the students was that is the most
effective way to reach each student I teach. I speak to each student on a daily basis, so using this
form of communication is logical to discuss with them the implementation. This impacted the
implementation greatly because each student knew about the new classroom procedures and
understood the changes, and each student had an opportunity to ask questions and receive
immediate feedback.
1.3.2

A) The criteria and methods used to monitor the implementation of the plan were decided with
the first team meeting. The team agreed that weekly emails needed to be established so they
would be able to ask questions and monitor my implementation of the plan. This method of
monitoring was decided because it was an effective and efficient procedure to establish. Another
method of monitoring the implementation of the plan was to have an administrator observe my
classroom every week. The rationale of using this method of monitoring was my assistant
principal will walk through my classroom every couple weeks, so we should have him come in
once a week to make sure the plan is being implemented.
B) One important adjustment I made during the implementation was to include my assistant
principal in the group to assist in the plan. The rationale for adding the assistant principal to the
group was because he was conducting walkthroughs in my classroom every week, so having him
give guidance to the plan and monitor its implementation would be an easy adjustment to make
to the plan. Another adjustment I made during the implementation was how fast I moved
through the unit. From the pre-test, students had three weeks to take the post-test. As the
students progressed through the unit and I used formative assessments to guide instruction, I
realized that three weeks is too short. I moved the post-test back two weeks, but with the
movement, I kept the date tentative for the post-test in case the students needed more time. The
rationale for moving the post-test date back and leaving it as a flexible data for the students is
because giving the students three weeks to learn and master new material was too short of a time
period. The students communicated to me that the speed we progressed through the unit was too
fast and that we needed to move slower.
C) The plan was created to show student growth in my mathematics classroom. When looking at
the cumulative data from the pre-test, the average of all the students was about 2 correct
questions out of 15. The data from the post-test revealed that the average number of correct
answers per student was about 11 correct answers. This is clearly showing an increase in student
achievement, showing student growth, and I met the goal of having 80% or more students reach
their Halfway to 100 score in fact, 86% of students met this goal. Another goal I had was to
increase the number of proficient and advanced students on the state standardized test scores, but
I will not be able to analyze those results until the fall of 2016.
D) The implementation of the plan improved instructional practice because I could use the pretest data and formative assessment data to guide the instruction of new content. I was able to
analyze how much information each student understood about each concept in the new unit, and
I used this information to guide instruction. Using this information to guide instruction, the
results show that student learning was greatly impacted in a positive manner. Looking at the
cumulative data, the average student increased their content knowledge from pre-test to post-test
by 9 more correct answers. These results show that implementing the classroom procedures to
show student growth in my classroom has affected student learning in a positive manner.
Attached is an example of a student that grew from 1 correct answer on the pre-test, to 14 correct
answers on the post-test.
1.4.1

A) While reflecting on the plan the team and I created, I decided that if I had the opportunity to
implement my plan again, I would change the Student Growth Plan by taking out the chart at the
bottom of the page. When analyzing the effectiveness of the score chart, having the students
chart their score on each formative assessment seemed like a good idea, but its effect eventually
became non-existent. The students forgot to fill out the chart, or students didnt fix their chart
after they had an opportunity to take a retake on a formative assessment. When reflecting, if I
used the Student Growth Plan again, it would not include the formative assessment tracker chart.
Another change I would make is to keep a digital copy of all the pre-and post-test scores. I had a
hard copy of each score in my gradebook, but I did not keep a digital copy on my computer. If I
had the opportunity to implement my plan again, I would keep an Excel spreadsheet copy of all
the pre-and post-test scores. A digital copy of the scores would assist my team and I in analyzing
the data after the unit is complete. Utilizing the digital copy of the scores would also allow the
team and me to create charts and graphs to help in the data analysis process. These charts and
graphs would be great visual representations of student growth to share with my colleagues and
with students in each class.
B) Reflecting and analyzing the information I have learned from the entire process of developing
and implementing my plan has influenced the way I will approach future problem-solving tasks.
On important lesson I learned was to create a team with professional and passionate educators. I
learned this because the group that I created, my principals and two supporting teachers, were
such an important piece to solving this problem in my classroom. The professionals in my group
were so encouraging and willing to assist in my implementation in any way possible. It was
clear to me after the research that carrying out the plan would have been much more difficult if I
didnt have people on my team that held such a high regard for education. Collaboration is such
a pivotal piece of educating our students, and the professionals in my group made for a great
group of collaborating individuals. Also, I learned the importance of creating a timeline for
implementing new procedures. Many things would have been overlooked or forgotten if not
planned out ahead of time with the timeline. The last significant lesson I learned from
developing and implementing the plan is the importance of taking time to reflect and analyze
data and classroom procedures. Taking time every week to analyze formative assessment data
assisted in lesson planning and classroom instruction to better serve my students.