Post assessment

The questions on the pre assessment related back to the same standards as the pre assessment.  Unfortunately, I wasn’t able to teach standard 7.18 in depth, so there weren’t any questions on the post assessment that explicitly addressed that standard.  However, the standard does deal with effect of Eastern religion on the United States, which does link back to tolerance, especially in light of the recent terror attacks, which is addressed in question 9 of the post assessment.  Questions 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 7 and 8 addressed standard 7.1.  Questions 3,5, 6 and 7 addressed standard 7.12 and question 9 addressed standard 7.18.  The last question, questions 10, is a personal question that requires personal thought, reflection and opinion. 

The post assessment questions address the same objectives as the pre assessment did.  The first objective (SWBAT describe the key terms related to religion) is addressed in questions 7 and 8.  The second objective (SWBAT compare three monotheistic religions) is addressed in questions 2, 5 and 6.  The third objective (SWBAT explain the core beliefs of at least 3 different religions) related to questions 2, 3, 5 and 7 and the fifth objective (SWBAT compare and contrast the origins and tenets of the World’s major religions) is reflected in questions 2, 3, 5 and 6.  The fourth objective, SWBAT research a religion choosing important information and report the information on a poster, is not linked to any of the post assessment questions because the research project was on minor world religions and I wanted this assessment to test major world religions, as that was the primary goal of this unit as a whole.

I wanted the post assessment to be set out in relatively the same format as the pre assessment, so it included the same types of questions.  I wanted to keep them as similar as possible to try and make sure that the type of test I gave didn’t affect the results.  So I used questions that required an answer of a word or a couple of lines.  I used a table for question 5 because it is a quick and efficient way to test the basics of 5 different religions.  Using a table ensured that I could get the most information in the most efficient and well set out way, and also allowed students to compare religions without realizing they were doing it.  I didn’t want to make the post assessment more than 10 questions because the table required a lot of information and I wanted to keep it manageable.  In the post assessment, like the pre assessment, I put the easier questions first and the more difficult questions last.  I left two higher order questions for the end to give students the chance to get into the right frame of mind.  These two questions were opinion questions rather than factual questions, which I felt more comfortable asking than I did in the pre assessment because I had gotten to know students better and they had gotten to know me better.

Like the pre assessment, the answers I was looking for were rather simple as 8 out of the 10 questions were simple factual questions with a right or wrong answer.  In the last 2 questions, I was looking for an answer that showed that the student had thought about the question and answered carefully.  I graded these questions on whether the students showed they had thought about and internalized something in the unit.  I asked students to answer on the test and put their names on it.  I made sure to tell them that it was not going to be graded, but was for me to compare with the pre assessment to see what they had learned.  I instructed students to do the best they could even though it wouldn’t be graded.

All but one student’s scores increased from the pre assessment to the post assessment.  The average score for the post assessment was 60%, which is 34% higher than the average score for the pre assessment.  The lowest score for the post assessment was 22% as opposed to the 5% for the pre assessment.  Figure 1.2 in Appendix A shows the difference in the class average for the pre assessment and post assessment.  In general, the test scores were significantly higher in the post assessment, as shown in Figure 1.1 in Appendix A.

28 students took the post assessment, which consisted of 10 questions.  All 28 students got the first question correct, none of which made the mistake of putting Catholicism as a separate religion as many did on the pre assessment.  In the second question, 24 students were able to differentiate between Judaism and Christianity to get the question correct.  Question 3, which asked students to describe 2 of the 5 pillars of Islam, was not as well answered.  Only 15 students got partial or full points for the question.  Students were given partial points when their answer was not entirely correct but did show some correct knowledge.  However, this number increased from the questions about Islam in the pre assessment by 9 answers.  16 students got question 4 correct, which asked who the founder of Judaism was, which is a little more than half of the students who took the post assessment.  All 28 students got some points for question 5, which was the table, which would be hard not to do because it is such a big table that covers so much information.  This also indicated to me that students knew the core beliefs of the 5 major world religions, which shows that they met some of the unit objectives.  21 students were able to compare Christianity and Islam in question 6, giving similarities and differences between the 2 religions, showing that they were able to compare and contrast an Eastern and Western religion.  Questions 7 and 8 dealt with Eastern languages and the students answered better on these questions than they did in the pre assessment, with 18 and 21 students getting those answers right respectively.  The last two questions were personal opinion questions that showed me students had thought about the unit and understood why it was important to learn this information.

Overall I was very happy with the student’s learning between the pre-and post-assessments.  They did much better overall in the post assessment and it showed that they had learned about world religions and met the course objectives.  I don’t know why the one student dropped by 3% in the post assessment.  He got the highest score for the pre assessment.  He had some behavioral and distraction issues throughout the unit and I wonder if he wasn’t listening or just didn’t try very hard on the post assessment.  He answered a lot of questions during the lessons and participated in class throughout the unit so I am not sure why his score dropped.  Overall, the results of the post test indicate that the students learned something throughout the unit.

(The graphs, post assessment and post assessment key can be found in the Appendix A folder under the pre assessment section).