Original Work Assessment

Date of Presentation:

12/15/17

Time of Presentation:

9:00am-10:00am

Materials:

For my original work, I simply used a computer, the internet, a pen, and paper to prepare. For

the presentation part of the project, I allowed the students to use a selection of the following

materials that depended on their assigned project: pen/pencil, notebook paper, butcher paper,

markers, pipe cleaners, and colored cotton balls.

Objective:

My objective during the project was to understand the process required to prepare for a lesson,

to know what the different learning types are and how people's learning types affect the way

they learn in a classroom setting, and to gain better teaching/presentation skills.

Description of Process:

There was a lot of preparation needed leading up to my presentation/project. I started out simply

by researching lesson plans and followed that up with researching learning styles. Once I

understood this, I took a multitude of learning style quizzes until I found a few that I liked and

then asked a few friends to take the quizzes and based on their preference and my own

preference, I chose the quiz I would use to get the learning types of the students. Next, I went to

one of the biology teachers at Wakeland and asked her if I could conduct my project in her

class. Luckily, she said yes, so my next step was to learn the topic she gave me to teach. This

was one of the hardest parts of my entire project, but it was cool to start with knowing nothing

and then teaching the class about it. As I learned about the topic, meiosis, I took ample notes on

it and slowly began to retain the information. Once I knew enough about meiosis, I began to

plan how I would present the information. I did this by making a lesson plan and then revising
the lesson plan to make sure I covered all of the information. Next, I made three projects, one

geared toward each of the learning types (auditory, visual, and kinesthetic). After that, I made a

prequiz and post quiz for the students to take during the presentation. I then practiced the entire

presentation on my brother who is a student in the same type of class I was presenting to. He

made sure that I was not leaving gaps in the students knowledge and that the lesson did not

cover things they already had learned. After a lot of practice, I got all the papers together and

went to the PAP Biology class and gave my presentation. In this presentation, the students told

me their learning style, took the prequiz, listened to my lesson, completed the assigned project,

and finally took the post quiz. After doing this, I graded all of the quizzes and put them on a

spreadsheet so that I could analyze the results. Finally I analyzed the results about the

relationship between the learning styles and actual learning of students.

Utilization of Higher-Level Thinking Skills:

I utilized the higher level thinking skills of apply, create, analyze, and evaluate throughout my

original work project. I used the skill, apply, which means to apply learned information into new

situations and scenarios, when I created the lesson plans for the presentation. I also used the

analyze thinking skill which is when you look at a multitude of information and then separate it

into parts. I used this skill when I graded the projects, analyzed the growth or decline in the

students’ performance, and finally concluded what the information meant. The next thinking skill

level that I used was evaluate which is when someone judges the quality of work, ideas, or

information with a set of criteria or standards. I used this skill when I decided which learning

style quiz I should have the students take, and I also used it when I decided what the most

effective way to present the student projects to the students was. The final skill I used was

create which is to create a completely new product and also putting various parts into one thing.

I used the conceptual knowledge dimension and metacognitive parts of the creating level when I

created the student projects from scratch and followed through with conducting the student

projects.
Results:

Most students benefitted even if their learning type was not considered! Kinesthetic learners had

the easiest time adapting to the learning types because this type of learner only improved their

test scores. There was a total of 28 students tested. Four were kinesthetic learners, eleven were

visual learners, and eleven were auditory learners. Two kinesthetic learners did the auditory

geared project and two did the visual geared project. Every single kinesthetic student improved

their test score. Five auditory learners took part in the auditory project, five did the visual project,

and two did the kinesthetic project. ⅘ of the auditory learners in the auditory project improved

their test score and one student got one point lower on his test. ⅗ of the auditory learners in the

visual project improved their test score, while one got one point lower and the other got a

significantly lower score. 2/2 of the auditory learners in the kinesthetic project improved their

scores. Of the visual learners, six did the auditory project, two did the visual project, and three

did the kinesthetic project. ⅚ of the visual learners in the auditory project improved their scores,

while one of the students did significantly worse. 2/2 of the visual learners in the visual project

improved their scores/ ⅓ of the visual students in the kinesthetic project improved their scores,

⅓ scored one point lower, and ⅓ did significantly worse.

Conclusions/Interpretations:

Although there are ways that people tend to learn better, most of the time, they improve their

knowledge no when they are presented the information, no matter the way the geared learning

style. Almost always, students improve their knowledge when given projects directly related to

their learning style. I think that I could have gotten better results if I repeated the project in a

larger group of students or multiple times with different students, but the results from the group I

tested show that learning styles many times do not affect learning too significantly.

Application/Meaning:

My original work project taught me that in most circumstances, students gain knowledge and

understanding through every type of learning. I was not expecting the outcome of my project to
be this, but now knowing this information will be helpful for many reasons! If teachers gear a

lesson to a certain type of learning, for example a visually based lesson, if each student pays

attention and makes some sort of effort, they should learn from the lesson! This is exciting to

learn because it means that all kids learn in some way no matter what, so as a teacher, I would

not have to focus too strongly on this subject when planning my lessons. I also benefited

through practice with my original work. I was able to practice planning a lesson from minimal

guidelines and then got to actually teach my lesson to students. This was really cool for me

because this is the task that a teacher does on a regular basis and is a large part of their job.

The experience in this gave me confidence that I will be a good teacher one day if I put forth the

effort and showed me that I enjoy doing the everyday tasks of a teacher.