USING GRAPHICAL DISPLAYby

John Froelichwww.lookingatlearing.org

A Picture is Worth a Thousand Words:

Graphical Display Principles

Large amounts of data can be displayed in a small space

Relationships can easily be displayed and interpreted

Context for the displays is central to understanding

Displays should be centered around simple, well-understood concepts

Today: Graphical Displays…

Using change in percentile ranking to show actual growth vs expected growth.

MCA Strand for Reading and Math using state means and Standard Deviations for context. These data will provide information to help plan curricular emphasis

NWEA (CALT/NALT) Reading and Math as predictors for future MCA achievement. Using strand information to plan curricular emphasis.

Using Looking at Learning to display proportion of time devoted to various activities during instruction.

Strand InformationDifferent difficulty each year—you can not

compare strand data from one year to another

Different # of items in each strand each year

The only possible analysis is to compare the % correct of the school to the % correct of state

Knowing the standard deviation add context to the meaning of the size of the difference

The standard error needs to be considered to know if the difference has some significance

NWEA CALT/NALT/MAPNWEA tests include scale scores for overall and

strands. The scale score for each has a similar meaning: that is a scale score of 206 for the overall or any strand has similar difficulty meaning.

NWEA norming study includes national norms for each grade level (percentile rankings) and growth norms. (A year’s growth keeps students at same %tile from year to year.)

Mpls schools have calculated correlations for fall scale scores to spring MCA in reading and math. (.87)

NWEA has sample problems for strands are various scale score levels—adding context for teachers.

NWEA CALT/NALT/MAPto use the conditional

formatPut NWEA data into an Excel spreadsheet

Sort by grade level

Select cells for reading or math scale scores and strands

Open format spreadsheet – place cursor on appropriate cell and copy

Go back to NWEA data—choose “Paste Special” and then “Format”

is an innovative assessment tool used to measure and guide

classroom-level instructional changes during school improvement efforts.

Looking at Learningis an intuitive software program that

automatically calculates duration and student participation for all activities

generates reports including graphs for individual observations or aggregate reports for any combination of observations

allows observers to add comments during observations

is effective when used by teachers observing each other

is a unique tool for staff development - not teacher appraisal

Looking at Learningmeasurement focus

Is based on the student’s point of view, not on the teacher’s point of view

Is based on constructivist learning strategies

Recognizes the importance of lesson design that emphasizes the cognitive purpose for activities

Recognizes that what happens in the classroom is the true indication of whether any reform effort has had the intended effect