Harnessing the Power of Data to Promote Student Success: Presentation at the Connecticut State Social Studies Conference, 2009

I was privileged to present a seminar highlighting the effective use of data to promote student achievement. The seminar focused on work based with IB World History students and work with the 9th grade social studies team at Windsor High School.

Harnessing the Power of Data to Promote Student Success

Educators use data constantly. We use the affective data we gather from observing our students interact with eachother to make effective cooperative groups, to address social issues within our classroom, and to reach individual students. We also use data from student assessments. In this presentation I use data from two formative assessments with my IB Higher Level World History class. Students responded positively to the use of data to set goals for improvement and I used the data to inform my instruction. Data can be a powerful tool to promote student reponsiblity for learning and success. Click on the image to access a copy of the slideshow.

A Paradigm for Instructional Decision Making

We live and work in the midst of a culture that is awash in media and resources. As educators it is our responsiblity to make wise decisions about which materials and methods will effectively provide our students with the best opportunities for learning. I prepared an inservice workshop to introduce our faculty to a model for instructional decision-making that I have developed. See the slide show here or by clicking the cover page image. Simply stated, this model asks us to DBAT our lessons:
a) Define our objectives clearly and based on curricular goals,
b) Utilize"best practices" research in lesson planning.
c) Be certain that the lesson is accessible to all students.
d) Is the proposed instruction time-effective considering the needs of the students, the goals of the curriculum, and the time required for the lesson(s)?

Data Wall I: CAPT Data to Promote Achievement

"Data-driven decision making" is currently in vogue in educational circles. I'm not one to chase the latest and best but I like a good idea and I think that teachers can harness this concept to promote student achievement and inform instructional practice. In the 2007-2008 school year I created a model "Data Wall" in my class to display my collection of class data related to standardized tests. I was initially surprised at the high level of attention students gave to this board and was pleased with their keen interest in analysis and evaluation of the data and updates made to the wall with subsequent formative and summative assessments. One of the many positive outcomes was a sense of seriousness about subsequent assesments and a growing sense of personal responsiblity among the students as we worked together to set specific individual goals for improvement and charted individual and class progress.

I used similar graphing and display techniques to collaborate with colleagues to analyze school-wide standardized test data. A summary of that data can be viewed upon request.

Pizza and Painting

Inspired by a desire to help students interact with art and develop a more sophisticated understanding of the elements of art I read Nancy G. Heller’s book “Why Painting is Like a Pizza; A Guide to Understanding Modern Art”. Synthesizing some of her ideas and working with the chef/teacher of our culinary arts program I created a program that combines the creation of personal pizzas with the evaluation of art and a field trip experience to the oldest public museum in the nation and local architectural landmarks. View the instructional powerpoint. We successfully used these lesson materials for several years with multple classes.

In conjunction with this series of classes I published (in-house) two work-booklets; one for student notes concerning the pizza-art connection and one concerning local landmarks and student work within the museum. View the museum workbook.

View students and the Culinary Arts instructor making pizzas and at the Wadsworth Atheneum.