Lee Norfleet

MEDT 7476
Dr. Linda Haynes
Assessment Implementation and Analysis
This assessment was conducted after a whole group review and discussion about Flinn
Scientifics Student Safety Contract. This document contains 55 safety rules that were
developed to be followed during science labs for the safety of all students and teachers.
Assessment Instructions:
These instructions were delivered verbally by the teacher:
You will create a comic that visually represents one of the rules on Flinn Scientifics Student
Safety Contract. You may work on this individually, or with a partner. You will select the rule
that you wish to represent. Be sure to have Ms. Scott approve and record which rule you will
use. Your comic will need to be a minimum of three frames.
No written instructions were provided, however a copy of the rubric was given to the
students at the beginning of the lesson.
Students then watched an overview video about Pixton, and the media specialist
demonstrated some of the basics within the program, such as creating an account and
logging in, adding and editing characters and props, setting backgrounds, and moving
elements within frames. Students were provided with a brief handout with instructions for
creating an account within Pixton.

Measurement Tool:

Student/Participant Submission with Teacher Feedback and Grade:

Report of Findings:

For this assignment, the students were using Pixton; a tool that was new to them as well as
their teacher. The media specialist conducted a brief explanation of how to navigate and
create elements within Pixton which took approximately twenty minutes of the first
dedicated hour. At that time, the students then began selecting their specific rule. In each
class, no two student / team were allowed to use a rule selected by another student / team.
Once their rule was determined and recorded with the teacher, the students were allowed
to begin creating their comics, however, many students struggled with generating content.
Even though the initial instruction included a single exemplar, the students were unclear as
to how to visually represent their lab safety rule. Also, there were many who expressed
frustration because once they developed their content, they were not able to create the
comic exactly as they intended due to either lack of knowledge about the program itself, or
lack of program functionality.

Impact on Student Learning

There were 113 students in three classes that completed this assessment. They were
evenly comprised of 56 males and 57 females. In this group, there were 56 Black, 45 White,
5 Hispanic, and 3 Asian students. While the majority were regular ed (85 students or 75%),
20 students were gifted (18%) and 8 students were special ed (7%). The average grade
for all students participating in this assessment was 92.

Student Gender

50%

50%

Male

Female

Student Ethnicity
3% 5%

51%

41%

Black

White

Asian

Hispanic

Special Populations
Special Ed, 7%
Gifted, 18%

Gifted

Special Ed

All of the special education students were in one of the three participating classes. For
these reporting purposes, we will call them Class 2. All of the gifted students were in one of
the three participating classes. For these reporting purposes, we will call them Class 3. In
addition to the twenty gifted students, Class 3 also contained seven Accelerated Content
students.
The comics themselves were used as a formative assessment, as each student / team
created a comic for a single rule, unique to their class. When the comics were complete,
each student / team shared their comic with the entire class. On a later date, after all
presentations were completed, there was a test that covered a majority of the rules that
served as their summative assessment.
It was noted that Class 3 which contained the gifted and accelerated content students
scored higher on both the formative and summative assessments. The teacher and I
discussed this and concluded from knowledge of gifted learners and our observations that
because gifted students are characteristically creative, they responded well to the creative
nature of the formative assessment.
Another significant note was that Class 2 which contained the special ed students
performed significantly higher on the formative assessment than they did on the
summative. This was attributed to the fact that the students in that class received an
abundance of assistance because there was an additional co-teacher available during
instruction. However, when taking their summative assessments, they do not receive any
assistance.

Average Formative Assessment Grade

97

98
96
94

92

92
90
88

87

86
84
82
80
78
Class 1

Class 2

Class 3

Average Summative Assessment

Grade
98
95

96
94
92
90
88
86

85

84

82

82
80
78
Class 1

Class 2

Class 3

Future Instructional Plans

Based on observation as well as the feedback provided, I believe that the students would
benefit greatly from seeing multiple exemplars to give them a better springboard from
which to begin creating their own comic. If they are provided with a wide array of visual

representations for multiple rules, this will allow them to better grasp the concepts
necessary to visually represent the content.

The media specialist and teacher were able to circulate and assist those that lacked
program knowledge. For those who wanted to incorporate elements that were outside of
the programs capabilities, they developed alternate ideas or found comparable solutions.
In order to alleviate some of these issues in the future, I think it would behoove the teacher
to begin initially with a more detailed instructional session on the tool itself, or even
identify a different tool that would be more user-friendly for beginners.
One other technical difficulty that the teacher identified was that saving the images was
cumbersome, and some final products were difficult to read. Students took screen shots of
their comics, pasted them into Microsoft Paint, and uploaded them into Edmodo. If the
teacher decides to do this project again with Pixton, she wants to look into subscribing to
the service, which would alleviate this issue.