LEVEL 2 INQUIRYby Haleigh A. Dykes

BACKGROUND

• I chose this wondering because I personally suffer with test anxiety, and I think when students hear that something is an assessment they automatically get nervous. So, I thought that maybe by providing a fun way to take assessments that their scores would increase because their testing anxiety would be relieved.

PURPOSE

• The purpose of my wondering is to find a less stressful way for teachers to assess their students so that the students don’t feel as overwhelmed and stressed out about taking the test. As a result, I believe this will increase test scores.

SUMMARY OF LITERATURE

• During my class, Intermediate Literacy, there were several articles that we had to complete reading responses on. Within these articles were several that discussed technology.

• One article talks about eBooks and describes the things that make an eBook top quality, and thus worth using. There are features like hearing the word sounded out for you, or hearing other sound effects for animals etc. the promote higher comprehension skills. (Cahill & McGill-Franzen, 2013)

• Another article talks about using the internet to find more information about a book that they were reading in class. This helps them understand what they’re reading, and can help them look up the information that they may not understand. (Bromley, Faughnan, Ham, Miller, Armstrong, Crandall, Garrison, & Marrone, 2014)

SUMMARY OF LITERATURE

• Reading these various articles about technology made me want to pursue a wondering that was technologically based because I think that technology is a great resource if used properly within the classroom.

• Unfortunately, I was never able to find any literature that directly connected with my wondering of using technology for assessments.

• I will note, however, that students are actually being assessed frequently with technology through the use of iStation, iReady, FastMath, etc. and the students actually enjoy doing these things so I feel as though they could really benefit from getting more technologically based assessments throughout the year, especially since their standardized tests have gone digital.

DATA COLLECTION

• When I first began my wondering, I asked my collaborating teacher for a copy of some of their formative and summative test scores, at which point I averaged them together and came up with an average score for each student.

• Next, I administered Kahoots to the students. The results of each Kahoot were saved to my account, where I later went back to analyze the scores. I averaged the scores for each student, and compared that to their average for the pen and paper assessments.

SAMPLE OF RESULTS

AVERAGE COMPARISON

90%-100%

80%-89%

70%-79%

60%-69%

<60%

PAPER & PENCIL AVERAGE90%-100%

80%-89%

70%-79%

60%-69%

<60%

KAHOOT AVERAGE

45

55

65

75

85

95

Paper + Pencil Average Kahoot Average

Individual Average Comparison

Y.A. L.A. S.C. N.D. C.F. A.H. S.L. M.L. Y.M. B.M. T.N. Ja.O.

Jo.O. K.P. A.P. Jo.R. Y.R. L.R. Ja.R. Je.T. Ja.T. N.T. Column1

WERE THERE MORE PASSING GRADES WITH PAPER & PENCIL OR KAHOOT?

Passing Scores (>70%)

Paper & Pencil Kahoot

• Overall, there were more passing grades through the use of a Kahoot.

• 11 students received a passing score of 70% or higher on the paper and pencil tests.

• There were 14 students who received a passing score of 70% or higher on the Kahoots.

CONCLUSION

Class Average

Paper & Pencil Average Kahoot Average

• Based on the data that I collected, my conclusion is that as a class, the average scores did not change much.

• However, more students received a passing grade on the Kahoot quizzes than the paper and pencil quizzes.

72.1%72.0%