Caralyn Short

March 26, 2021

Student Learning Assessment

For my student learning assessment, I wanted to assess the students on their

usage of homophones in their writing. More specifically, I wanted to assess the

students’ comprehension of “there, their, they’re”. I decided to focus on this specific skill

because I had read over a variety of student work on schoology during remote learning

and noticed a lot of confusion about how to use these words in their posts in response

to different discussion forums. For example, some of the students were misusing one or

more of these homophones in different ways when summarizing information about a

chapter in social studies when referring to the different Native American tribes that they

had just learned about. Some had also misused these words in their responses to the

essential questions posted in their ELA course. Because of this confusion, I had

previously thought about creating a lesson to cover this grammar concept. I also chose

this topic because I knew that for fifth grade, one of the ELA standards that the

Chippewa Valley District covers is CCSS.ELA-LITERACY.L.5.5.C which asks that

students “use the relationship between particular words (e.g., synonyms, antonyms,

homographs) to better understand each of the words”. In order to properly understand

and use these words correctly, I felt that the students must first be familiar with the skills

outlined in this standard by learning how to use the relationships between these words

to self-correct moving forward.

I assessed the students' understanding by first having them write a letter. I felt

this would not only provide me with rich writing samples but that it would also be a great
way to launch our novel study that we were starting by reading a book called “Dear Mr.

Henshaw” by Beverly Cleary. This novel is a story organized into letters and diary

entries. To write their letter, I asked that the students write to anyone about anything as

long as they found a way to include the words “their, there, and they’re”. I had these

three words grouped together in the form of a word bank for them to refer to on the

smart board so that they could use it as a tool for spelling these words and to also see

that there were three separate words that I was asking for. I also wanted them to see

that even though they sounded the same, they should be used differently throughout

their letters. I also asked that the students circle their words in order to double check

their work to make sure they were consciously trying to use them in their writing.

In reviewing these letters, I noticed that a few students misused a word but then

used it correctly in another area of their letter. The use of the word was not consistent.

For example, In Figure 1, Student #28 uses “their” incorrectly when she could have

used the contraction “they’re” to fit the intended purpose since she also put the word

“are”. However, she did use this contraction correctly later on in another sentence.

Figure 1 also shows that Student #13 made a similar error. As I continued on reading

over and reviewing the letters, the contraction “they’re” was frequently used correctly in

one case but not the other. I also noticed that there were other inconsistencies in errors

involving the use of “there” and “their”. Figure 2 shows two more writing samples that

provided evidence of a student being unsure of how to apply the homophones.

Reflecting on the results, I felt that these missteps may be attributed to the fact that

students may have felt pressured into using three homophones and used one word

twice knowing that it would be right in one of the cases in which it was being used.
Despite not knowing what the sources were for these mistakes, I felt confident that

these inconsistencies supported the choice to use these homophones in a review

lesson for the students.

 After this initial assessment, I then gave the students a pre-assessment that was

in the form of a worksheet. The worksheet was outlined with fill-in-the-blank prompts

and a sentence prompt asking for the students to write an example sentence for each

homophone to show if they knew how to use the word correctly. There were 13 total

questions, but I totalled the scores out of 12 because many of the students missed a

question that was difficult to see (question #10) on the back of the worksheet, so I felt

this would be an unfair question to include in the total score and would have skewed the

data. It is also important to note that we had 3 students that regularly receive bilingual

support, and a few other students who went to small groups for reading and academic

support during our writing and grammar time. There were also two absences when

originally assessing the students. Though these absent students were present for the

grammar lesson and took a post-assessment, I was not able to give them a
pre-assessment before the lesson, so I felt their data would be inaccurate and did not

include them in the overall analysis.

After reviewing the pre-assessments, I realized that there were a wide range of

students who varied from being a little confused to really lost on the usage of these

homophones. The patterns of errors made on the pre-assessment matched closely with

errors made in the letters in terms of the incorrect usage of the words remaining

inconsistent. Parallel to many of the student letters, the words were used correctly in

some cases but not in others as shown below in Figure 3. The pre-assessment is a

more structured form of assessment than the letters because the students were given

the context to work with rather than in the letters where the students were being asked

to provide the context to convey their understanding of the word. This work may be

inconsistent due to guessing, since the context is provided, but it may also be due to the

fact that they were certain in straightforward prompts but had trouble applying it in other

cases when what the blank represented was less clear. For example, some students

used many of the homophones correctly when only one blank was included in a

sentence. However, these same students seemed mixed up when there were two

blanks in one sentence as in the Student #24 sample in Figure 4 below. It is possible

that when students saw two blanks instead of one, the intended meaning of the

homophone to fit in the blank was less clear.

 The overall data supported that the students would benefit from a lesson that

focused on these three commonly used homophones since they would be using these

words enduringly in future assignments and writing projects. The data in Figure 5 below

showed that 3 students from the 18 that participated scored under a 50% and that 8
students scored lower than a 70% on the pre-assessment. In contrast, there were only 5

students that scored higher than 90%. Since these 5 students seemed confident in their

understanding of the homophones, I knew that when I set the stage for the grammar

lesson that I would let the students know that for some, the lesson would serve as more

a review or reiteration to clarify what they were already familiar with. I also looked ahead

to see that their Journeys curriculum was about to cover other homophones (such as

sea and see) and homographs along with their scheduled story the following week. I

figured this would be a great lesson plan to also supplement this future lesson and

would serve as a strong reference point for the students to understand the use of other

homophones.
 The first goal for carrying out my lesson was to identify the type of words that

“their, there, and they’re” were classified as and to address why the students may be

experiencing some confusion with these words. I pointed out that the words are

homophones and that homophones are words that sound exactly the same, yet are

spelled different and hold different meanings from one another. During the lesson, I had

the students signal me if they felt that was a relatable reason as to why they may have

struggled when they tried to use these words successfully. The feedback that I received

was that they were struggling with the right spelling of the word intended in their writing

because there was no way for them to distinguish between the words when hearing

them unless they used the context. For this reason, context was another major focus of

the lesson. I gave them examples of when context clues would signal to the listener or

reader about which meaning of the word they were implying.

As the lesson progressed, my next set of goals was to review the meaning and

spelling of the word each separately so that they were no longer grouped by their sound

but rather looked at independently for their different meanings. This goal was achieved

by reviewing the definition and by showing an example of how the word would be used

in a sentence paired with an image where I created a sample sentence to aid struggling

students with a visual. I made sure to address the characteristics of each word, whether

it be used to describe location, used as a possessive, or as a contraction so that the

students would be able to make individual connections with the words and their

purpose.

After reviewing the words, a major part of my lesson was to put this into practice

and to apply what the students have learned. I had passed out index cards to each
student. The students all had three cards and were instructed to write a homophone on

each one as I modeled how to spell them out. I wanted them to actively practice writing

them out in order to be intentional in their spellings of the words. Then, I had several

sentences in a slideshow put together for them to fill in the blank for different sentences.

As I read the sentence aloud, I asked that they listen and then hold up the card to show

the homophone that they believed made the most sense for the sentence. Each

sentence on the slides was matched together with a picture to add a visual context to

differentiate my lesson. I used the cards they held up as an immediate form of

assessment and used these rapid results to guide my approach for explaining each

answer. It seemed that by a show of hands that as the lesson progressed, the students’

understanding gradually increased.

Following the lesson, I immediately handed out the same worksheet used as a

pre-assessment in order to use it as a post assessment to produce accurate data to

look for growth. I let the students know that the worksheet and prompts were exactly the

same and that it was intentional. I told the students that I wanted them to do their best

and to double check their answers before turning it in. I also used this transition as an

opportunity to clarify the directions for the sentence prompt on the back. The prompts

ask for the sentences to be related to elephants when applying how to use the given

word correctly and I noticed in the original handing in of assignments that the students

may have missed that direction about the theme of elephants, though they understood

they were making sample sentences with the given word.

I was pleased to see the results because there were several students who

showed growth directly after the carrying out of the lesson. The first student’s
post-assessment that I reviewed was Student #24’s. This student had originally scored

a 3 out of 12 on his pre-assessment and exhibited confusion about all three of the

homophones. Figures 6 and 7 below show the original assessment versus the

post-assessment for this specific student. His post-assessment shows clear

improvement in his ability to discern between the triple homophones. I was concerned

that there were 4 students who scored lower than on their pre-assessment, but I was

able to sit one on one with each of them to clarify the confusion.
 Other students showed similar growth on their post assessment. Figure 8 below

shows a bar graph depicting the two scores side by side to show the difference in

scores. From this graph and after reviewing the post-assessments, I gathered that 8

students scored over a 90% and 16 scored above a 70%. This was a measurable

increase from the previous results. Figures 9-17 show other student samples comparing

the assessments. Though many factors may have affected the original scores, such as

a potential language barrier or difficulty in other grammar areas, the post-assessment

suggests that many students found the triple homophone lesson and activity helpful.
 I believe that after the lesson, the students were more familiar with the usage of

the words. However, I think that there is still a great potential for better comprehension

in terms of these three commonly used homophones. If I was to continue with these

students throughout the school year, I would find ways to weave this concept into the

curriculum to help make more connections between the words and their distinct

meanings. This assessment analysis gave me great insight into how effective it can be

to focus in on a specific concept where students are struggling.

Moving forward, I will continue to find new ways to assess student

comprehension based off of student work samples and both formative and summative

assessments. I will work on recognizing optimal opportunities to enrich the coverage of

the district curriculum by seeking the different needs of students and using this to help

me set goals for designing lessons. I will continue to support students in areas where

there is evidence of confusion. From this data analysis, I have learned that the same

pre and post test helps form future lessons and also helps me gain a more accurate
insight into student growth. This also helped me see how effective looking for patterns is

when anticipating the struggles that students may be facing when trying to learn or

review a specific concept.