Kimberly McCreary

Data Analysis
September 2017

This data analysis was completed in my first grade classroom. My class has 26 students. Six students
are identified and served in the gifted program. Five students are English Language Learners. Two
students are on RTI Tier 2, with strategies to help them be more successful in Reading. There are 12
boys and 14 girls in my class.

Before beginning our unit on Weather, a pretest was given to all students to determine what they
already knew about weather and the concepts that would be covered in our unit. The pretest was made
up of 10 questions and focused mainly on types of weather and using tools to measure weather (two of
the main standards of focus in our Weather unit). All questions were read aloud to all students. Most of
the class completed the test in a whole group setting, but I did pull one small group at a later time for
the two students on RTI Tier 2 and ELL students. This allowed me to focus more closely on the individual
needs of these students to ensure that they understood each question.

Upon reviewing the pretests, I found that 10% of the class scored at or above a 75%. The average score
for the entire class was 55%. When looking at specific questions, I found that most students did not
have any prior knowledge on the water cycle (specifically what precipitation, condensation, and
evaporation means) and they also struggled with using tools to measure the weather. They did not
know what tools they could use to measure how much rain falls in a day (rain gauge) or what tool could
be used to measure temperature (thermometer). Most of the class was able to answer the basic
questions about types of weather, but many were confused about the difference between types of
weather and describing the weather (for example, they thought wet was a type of weather, rather
than a way to describe rainy weather).

Using the information I gathered through this pretest, I was able to adjust my unit lessons to teach my
class what they did not already know. I was able to determine topics to spend more time on and which
topics I could spend less time on, just to clarify some misconceptions. I also used the information from
this pretest to form small groups for my Weather Unit lessons, so that during our weather activities, I
could pull those small groups to remediate or enrich their learning. For instance, in the Types of
Weather lesson, I pulled a small group during the independent work time so that I could give examples
and show visuals for different types of weather. With the extra assistance, they were able to complete
their own assignment and then meet back with their peers to do the share time (guessing what weather
each person drew/wrote about).

After completing our Weather Unit, I gave the posttest (same types of questions, still 10 questions) and
the average score for the entire class was 90%. 93% of my students scored at or above 75% on the
posstest. That is a growth (on the average score) of 35% from the pretest to the posttest.