Megan+Dickherber

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Pace Academy
Math and Science Teacher mdickherber@paceacademy.org



Mrs. Megan Dickherber has been a math and science teacher in the Upper School at Pace Academy for 5 years. Prior to joining the faculty at Pace, she worked in malaria research at Tulane and Emory Universities. Mrs. Dickherber received a B.A. in Mathematics and Biology from University of Kansas in 1999, and completed her M.S.M.E in Mechanical Engineering with emphasis in Heat Transfer at Georgia Tech in 2001. Mrs. Dickherber’s primary goal as a teacher of math and science is to empower her students with confidence and patience as problem-solvers. She resides in Marietta, GA with her husband Tony and two young children.

Takeaways / Big Ideas
Through the resources we studied and the Action Research I conducted in my classroom, I have completely overhauled how I use assessment in my classroom. I used to think of assessment as mainly to report to parents and administrators how the students were doing, but now I think of it primarily as a source of feedback to the students. I view assessment as much more of a learning tool, and use formative assessments much more extensively. I feel empowered with the knowledge of how to help my students of all ability levels reach the objects of the course. My students are more comfortable now with being challenged, objectives in my class are clearer, and my grading now more appropriately represents their understanding of the material rather than how they understand it relative to their classmates.

AR Overview
A large percentage of my students have diagnosed learning disabilities, and it has been challenging to meet the learning needs of all of the students in my classes. Even with varied classroom instruction and careful outlining of unit objectives, many of my struggling students were having a hard time succeeding on the traditional "end of unit" assessments. When I learned about Student-Generated Assessment (Marzano, 2010), I was very excited to try it in my classroom because it seemed like the perfect way to engage all of my students in more active learning. I provided my students a list of objectives of which they had demonstrate their understanding and a detailed rubric (see below). I also encouraged them to think about what ways they learned best, and to try to match the format of their project to their best learning style. After they completed the projects and received feedback, I then evaluated their performance on the traditional "end of unit" test.

AR Question
How will Student-Driven Assessment affect Performance on Traditional Summative Assessments?

AR Process

 * 1) Students were assigned a project to demonstrate their understanding of the learning objectives of the unit.
 * Two classes were given the student-driven (creative) project as the experimental group, and two classes were given a traditional written paper as the control group. The students with the creative project were allowed to use any format that they wished to demonstrate their understanding.
 * Demonstration of the learning objectives was assessed on a 2.0 scale (Chappius, et al., 2012):
 * 2: complete understanding
 * 1: partial understanding
 * 0: lack of understanding or complete misunderstanding.
 * 1) Students were surveyed after being given the project for their feedback about their anticipated benefit of the project.
 * 2) Students submitted their completed projects, and were given a survey for feedback.
 * 3) Projects were graded and returned to students. Students were allowed to resubmit projects to earn back 50% of lost points.
 * 4) Students were given a survey for how well prepared they felt for the summative "end of unit" assessment just prior to the test.
 * 5) Students took the test and were given a survey immediately afterwards for feedback on how well prepared they actually were for the test.
 * 6) Tests were graded, and compared to students 1st-semester test averages.
 * 7) <span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman',Times,serif; font-size: 120%;">A final survey was given to students to measure reaction to the project after seeing their test grades.

AR Project Samples
<span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman',Times,serif; font-size: 120%;">I was completely amazed at the overall quality of the creative projects, especially because the creative component was not a part of their grade. These students were simply excited to have the freedom to do the project as they wished, and went well above the "minimum" requirement to earn an good grade. A few stand-out examples are below.

<span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman',Times,serif; font-size: 120%;">A painting done by 10th grade student Anna Brown

A news magazine created by 10th grade student Jayla Ellis

A song written by 10th grade student Alyssa Calloway



A sculpture made by 10th grade student Ariel Levin



AR Data Analysis
<span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman',Times,serif; font-size: 120%;">One of the types of data I collected was student response to surveys. Their responses to the questions were -1 if they felt negatively, 0 if they felt neutral, or 1 if they felt positively. These responses are averaged over 21 students with diagnosed learning disabilities (LD students) and 36 students with no diagnosed learning disabilities (non-LD students). Although I did many different surveys as part of my Action Research, I will share just a couple of the more interesting results below.

<span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman',Times,serif; font-size: 120%;">Not surprisingly, both LD and non-LD students were very positive about doing the creative project that gave them the freedom to choose the way they demonstrated their understanding of the objectives. Both LD and non-LD students in the control group were much less enthusiastic about being assigned a traditional paper to write (and they were aware that other classes had been assigned a creative project).



<span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman',Times,serif; font-size: 120%;">The LD students assigned the creative project and the traditional paper both felt that the project would help them perform better on the "end of unit" test. This reaction was very interesting, and was exactly the type of response I was hoping to get from the assignment.

<span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman',Times,serif; font-size: 120%;">After grading the projects and grading the "end of unit" tests for the students in both groups, I compared their scores to their average test scores from 1st semester. There was __**no significant improvement**__ in the grades from any group. This was a surprise to me because I was receiving a great deal of positive feedback from the students in class. So, I decided to do one final survey to see if there was improvement in other aspects of the class for the students, something beyond just their scores on the summative tests.

<span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman',Times,serif; font-size: 120%;">The results of the final survey showed without a doubt that the experience of doing the project had improved the class experience for most of the students in the following areas:
 * 1) <span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman',Times,serif; font-size: 120%;">Helped them remember the material better
 * 2) <span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman',Times,serif; font-size: 120%;">Helped them think more deeply about the material
 * 3) <span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman',Times,serif; font-size: 120%;">Helped them feel more in control of their own learning and success in the class
 * 4) <span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman',Times,serif; font-size: 120%;">Helped them feel proud of the work they did in the class

<span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman',Times,serif; font-size: 120%;">Amazingly, the affects described above were experienced 40% more strongly by my LD students.

AR Conclusions
<span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman',Times,serif; font-size: 120%;">I will definitely continue to use a student-driven assessment prior to any "end of unit" summative assessment in the future. I have almost completed a second cycle (results not shown here), and my students have been even more enthusiastic about the creative project now that they are familiar with this type of assessment. It has truly helped my students become more motivated day to day in the course. Putting them more in control of their learning has helped my students believe that they can be successful. This impact was especially strong for my students who typically struggle the most and who I have found it most difficult to reach. The engagement in activities and classroom discussion has gone up tremendously, and honestly makes teaching the class more enjoyable as well.

<span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman',Times,serif; font-size: 120%;">I certainly feel as though the students are remembering the material better than before I started using student-driven assessment. I am very curious to see if this improves final exam scores at the end of the spring semester.

<span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman',Times,serif; font-size: 120%;">Next year I am planning on putting more emphasis on "Depth of Knowledge" in the student-driven assessment to see if that has any measurable impact on success on the "end of unit" summative assessments.

Lit Review & Resources
"Learning to Love Assessment", Tomlinson, C. A., __Educational Leadership__, December 2007/January 2008, Vol. 65, Number 4, Informative Assessment, pages 8 - 13.

"How to Know What Students Know", Himmele, W., and Himmele, P., Educational Leadership, September 2012, Vol. 70, Number 1, pages 58 - 62.

"Student-Generated Rubrics: Bringing Students into the Assessment Process", (Mar., 2000) Skillings, M.J., Ferrell, R., __The Reading Teacher__, Vol 53, No. 6., pages 452-455.

__Classroom Assessment for Student Learning: Doing it Right and Using it Well__,(2012) Chappuis, J., Stiggins, R., Chappuis, S., Arter, J., Pearson Education, Inc.

__Formative Assessment & Standards-Based Grading__,(2010) Marzano, R. Marzano Research Laboratory.

Reflections
<span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman',Times,serif; font-size: 120%;">My EE Ford experience has been truly transformative. I think about everything I do in the classroom differently. I feel like the knowledge I have gained through this fellowship has equipped me to be a better teacher. I feel more in control of reaching students of all levels, and I feel like I now have a process (Action Research) to continuously make improvements to my instruction. Working with teachers in public schools as well as in other private schools has been very rewarding and has given me a support system and new friends. I have already planned to do a workshop at my own school, and several other teachers are excited to try some of the student-driven assessment I developed this year.