The post-assessment was fundamentally the same as the pre-assessment in regards to the formatting. I designed this test so that there would be a number of opportunities for the students in the class to succeed.

            Question 1 on the post-assessment is a map with 27 elements which included countries, continents, directional elements, and geographic regions. On the pre-assessment there were only 10 elements on the map which only covered 10 countries. The reason I more than doubled the elements was because I discovered that only 5 of the 34 students in my class were able to identify more than 5 elements on the map, which the average student identifying only 2 or 3 elements. Because of this discovery, I made the decision to add in the additional elements which included labeling a compass rose. Once learned, students would be able to identify which side (east or west) of the world they were looking at as well as be able to be given verbal directions to look for a particular element and find it.  

            Question 2 is a listing question. I asked them to identify the eight elements of culture. This question was not on the pre-assessment, but I added it because as we began to move through the unit discussing culture and cultural centers, based on the short on a quick write I had the students do describing their culture, they did not have an adequate base of knowledge about cultures in order to understand what might make a cultural center and why different cultures might trade with each. Both of these concepts were important for the unit and so we spent a day and half during the unit talking about the elements of culture and how they help describe and make up a culture.

            Question 3 is a short answer question and is similar to question 10 on the pre-assessment. In the post-assessment version I required that the students combine the information they know about the elements of culture and explain their own culture rather than just speak about culture in general.

            Questions 4, 5 and 6 are short answer questions requiring definitions of traded items, importing and exporting as well as explaining their relationship to culture. These questions are nearly the same as questions 8,9 and 11 from the pre-assessment; however it also requires that they understand how they are tied to an individual culture.

            Question 7 on the post-assessment asks them to compare and contrast trade routes from a distant point in the past to today. This keeps an element of the timeline on questions 5 of the pre-assessment by requiring them to understand the progression of time, but requires them to think about travel as a progressive and evolving idea and think about travel and trade together as it evolves.

            Question 8 on the post-test is an extra credit question. I decided to give the class an extra credit question because I believed that the seven regular questions on the test would probably take the majority of the time. I also wanted to give students who had worked hard throughout the two weeks an opportunity to tie all of their learning together and create a story that would use all the elements of the unit together. I informed the students that in order to move onto the extra credit question they had to attempt an answer on all the regular questions first.   

            On the day I gave the post-assessment to the class, I talked to them about good test-taking strategies and allowed them the first 10 minutes of class to review their notes. I put up the following slides. Once I handed out the test they were given 45 minutes to take the assessment.  The students in the class who needed adaptations were given extra time if needed the next day and there was one student who needed to have the test read to him. This was slightly different from the pre-assessment because what I was trying to learning from these students during the pre-assessment was not could they answer every question, but how they answered the questions they did attempt and how much assistance did they need. Because the post-assessment was so similar to the pre-assessment the students who previously asked many clarifying questions through the pre-assessments were able to read through and understand what the questions were asking in the post-assessment.

            The results of the pre-assessment ranged in percentage scores from 6% to 66% with the average score of 35%. Because they were beginning the unit having very little content knowledge my expectation was that there would be significant gains in their learning if I was effectively supporting their learning with the information and activities in my lesson plans.  As a result of the two week unit I taught and the methods I employed to teach it, the post-assessment scores ranged from 16% to 96% with an average score of 65%. This was an average learning gain of 28%.  There were a couple of outliers as well making learning gains of as much as 75% or as little as -6%, but I will go over those students in the Analysis portion of this Work Sample.

            In regards to the post-assessment there were a couple of students who showed enormous learning gains, as well a couple of students who showed only marginal improvement throughout their work. One such student for example Student 34 who received a 15% on pre-assessment was able to achieve a 90% on the post-assessment. In contrast, Student 7 received a 53% on the pre-assessment and a 65% on the post-assessment.  As you can see on the spread sheet in the Individual Student Visual Representation section both of these students turned in their work consistently; however, if you look at their scores for quizzes or checks, their scores are lower than when they work in class on assignments, but there is an improvement for both students from the first quiz they took on continents and countries which was a mapping project where they each received a very low score (1 and 1.5 respectively) to the post-assessment where they each were able to label more than half of the elements on the mapping portion (question 1). Overall the improvement that Student 34 was able to make was due to how thorough she was in answering each of the questions. Where in the pre-assessment she provided one word answers or none at all, in the post-assessment she addressed each question very clearly and with great detail. Student 7; however, did the same thing in the post-assessment that she did in the pre-assessment which was to only answer the questions halfway. While this was also the reason she didn’t receive full credit on her “Personal Atlas” I cannot say for certain that this is a consistent pattern for her.