DATA COLLECTION

Data collection has been a very important phrase in education for the past several years, and its popularity only seems to be growing. In the past seven years teaching science, I am ashamed to admit that I haven't done much in the way of data collection (in terms of grades, objectives and standards) with my students. This fall, I really wanted to turn over a new leaf, and I began collecting data from each test that I would share with students and then post in my classroom. I created data charts for our Rocks and Plate Tectonics test showing individual student scores for each class as well as a class average. When I passed the tests back, I would share this chart with students so that they could see where their grades were in terms of their classmates and the class averages.

I liked the idea of posting the results from each test in my classroom and being able to compare each test, however, I did not feel like this data collection was making much of an impact on my students. I planned to do the same with our Earthquakes Quiz a few weeks ago, until a better idea hit me while grading quizzes and study guides. I was very disappointed in the fact that my students did not perform well on the Earthquakes Quiz, and I was also very upset that a very large number of them did not complete the review sheet. I began to wonder (even though I already knew) what the correlation was between student grades and whether or not they completed the study guide. My good friend, Susie, who is our math teacher said, "Why don't you create a double bar graph?" Brilliant! I created a double bar graph showing the number of students for each class who completed the study guide versus the number of students who did not complete the study guide, and the letter grade that they earned on the quiz.

When I presented the bar graph to students after passing quizzes back, their mouths dropped! Their reactions were exactly what I was hoping for: one of those great educational moments! Even better, parent-teacher conferences were shortly after I created this graph, so I was able to share this with parents and students in the meeting, as well as whether or not the student completed the study guide and the grade that was earned on the quiz. Moving forward, I am challenging students to have 100% study guide completion for our Volcanoes Quiz in a few weeks, and I am going to create a similar graph for students to compare results. I am just hoping that students come through for me in completing their study guides, and that the quiz grades improve drastically! What do others do for data collection in their classroom? Next year, I would like to expand my data collection methods and involve students in the process so I am looking for some ideas.