Weachter 1

Shelley Weachter
Broadway High School
Emily Reedy
Geometry
I.

Setting

II.

Content/Subject/Field Area

III.

Baseline data

IV.

SMART Goal

Goal
My goal is for all

Observable
Behavior
I will check

Cooperating Teacher:
School Year: 2016
I gave a pretest to both geometry
classes but I will analyze the data for
5/6 period. This class is double blocked
so I see them for 90 minutes every day.
There are 15 students in this class. No
students are ELL. 1 student has a
resource period with a special
education teacher but is not labeled as
SPED. This particular student has yet to
pass the Algebra 1 SOL as well.
Out of the 15 students, there are 6
males and 9 females.
All of the students were given the
pretest, but the data for one student is
not included because he did not get to
finish the exam do to absences. So out
of the 15, 14 students data will be
analyzed.
Double block geometry
This data is analyzing the progression
through the unit on right triangles. They
have some prior experience with the
Pythagorean theorem, but every other
concept was brand new to them.
Of the 14 students, 100% scored less
than 12% on the pre-test
Statement: For the unit on right
triangles, 100% of my students will
meet the minimum score defined by
MIN=Pre+[(100-Pre)x.35] on the posttest given at the end of unit.
Furthermore, 70% of my students will
demonstrate sufficient knowledge of
the concepts by scoring at least 60% on
the post-test.
Criteria
Measurement
My criteria for

Each question is

Weachter 2
students to show
significant
improvement from
the pre-test to the
post test.

progression
throughout the
unit by giving
quizzes. From
those I will
determine what
concepts students
need some extra
practice before the
test.

measuring
improvement is
the post-test,
which is identical
to the pre-test.
The test is 54
questions and
provides multiple
types of questions
and multiple
questions on the
same concept.

Means for attaining goal

Strategy
Evidence
Scaffolding- slowly
Ex. Making sure they
building up information,
understand how the sine
piece by piece
function works before
moving on to cosine
Frequent repetition of
Cumulative homework
main concepts
and warm-up
assignments. Take for a
grade, scores will show
retainment.
Present memory aids
Whether they remember
trig functions or not.
-Tell SohCahToa story,
show them catchy
concept songs

worth 1 point.
There are 4 bonus
questions. If they
answer those
correctly, they will
replace incorrect
answers on the
test. Their scores
will be calculated
by the percentage
of questions
answered
correctly. Partial
credit will only be
awarded if the
question has
multiple parts.

V.

Target Date
everyday

Many days throughout

unit

Use songs with special

right triangles and trig.
Tell SohCahToa story once
finished with tangent
notes.

Weachter 3

Goal: For the unit on right triangles, 100% of my students will meet the minimum
score defined by MIN=Pre+[(100-Pre)x.35] on the post-test given at the end of unit.
Furthermore, 70% of my students will demonstrate sufficient knowledge of the
concepts by scoring at least 60% on the post-test.

My SAPA goal is similar to those in the math department at Broadway High

School. Many of the teachers use the following formula: Minimum score (on posttest)= pre-test score + [(100- pre-test score) times .35]. This will give a low
minimum score, one that hopefully 100% of students can meet and surpass. The
minimum score, although low, will still show measureable improvement from the
beginning of the unit. For example, if a student scores a 0% on the pre-test, he/she
would be expected to have a minimum score of 35% on the post-test.
The unit on right triangles is compiled of many brand new concepts. The only
concept they have seen before is the Pythagorean Theorem. With that, I expected

Weachter 4
the pre-test scores to be very low and indeed they were. No student scored above
11 percent. The students scores, in percent, on the pre-test and the minimum score
based on the formula are presented in the table below.

Studen
t
Brookl
yn
Ana
Summ
er
Meliss
a
Jasmin
e
Tyler
Briann
a
Allison
Britny
Bethan
y
Josh
Will
Riley
Jackso
n

Pretest

Minimum to
meet goal

4
11

38
42

35

36

5
6

38
39

0
8
0

35
40
35

7
6
0
0

40
39
35
35

35

On the pretest the only one student answered any trig questions correctly. A few
students correctly answered questions that required usage of the Pythagorean
Theorem. The other questions students were able to answer only required the
knowledge that a triangle is made up of 180 degrees. Since the students
knowledge was so limited on the topic, my lesson plans did not change as a result
of the pretest. I would continue as if students knew nothing specifically about right
triangles.

Weachter 5
Because the departmental minimum score was so low, I anticipated at least
the majority of my students to surpass it. Thus, the next piece of my goal stated
that 70% of my students should score at least a 60 on the post-test.

The Test
I used the exact same test for the pre-test and the post-test. The test was 54
questions long and included many different types of questions. There were no
questions that were strictly review but many questions incorporated knowledge of
quadrilaterals and basic triangle properties. Interspersed in the free-response
questions were multiple choice and Yes or No questions. There was also 8 word
problems for which the students needed to draw pictures and then solve using
trigonometric functions. Each question was worth 1 point, despite the fact that they
varied in difficulty. The test can be found in the folder for March 24, 2016.
The pre-test was administered on February 23 rd and the students were given
about 30 minutes to complete as much as they knew. The majority of students
turned in the test long before the 30 minutes was up. No student took the entire
time allotted. The unit progressed over the next month and the post test was given
on March 24th. An outline of the unit is provided in the SAPA folder on Google Drive.
The results for the class are graphically expressed in the chart below.
Summer scored the highest with an 83% and Jackson scored the lowest with a 12%.
I believe the circumstance Jackson was in was the reason for his score. He was
suspended when the test was given and would not stay after school to make up the
test. Two weeks after the test, he was given the opportunity to work for about 30
minutes in class; in that time he only answered 7 questions. Tyler was also absent
the day we took the test and had to wait until after spring break to make it up,

Weachter 6
which probably aided to his failing score. Riley was present for the test, but scoring
below a 40 is not irregular for him. These 3 students did not surpass their minimum
score.

Post-test Scores

A comparison of the pre-test, minimum scores, and post-test is at the top of the
next page.
As seen on the following graph, I did not meet my primary goal of 100% of
my students surpassing the minimum score. I did meet the second piece of my goal
though. My goal was to have 70% of the class score above a 60% on the test and
71% did so. I believe Jackson would have been one of those students if he had not
missed instruction during the unit and came to make up the test in a timely fashion.
I was expecting the class to perform better as a whole on this assessment because
the majority of students were doing very well with the information when I informally
assessed their understanding throughout the unit. The class average on the test
was a 59%; excluding the 3 boys that did not meet their minimum score the class
average was 69%.

Weachter 7

Pre/Post test data for 5/6 period

Pre-test

Minimum to meet goal

Post-test

The next two graphs show an item analysis of the test. Each question number
is labeled on the x-axis and the number of students that answered the given
question incorrectly is labeled on the y-axis. Due to the number of questions on the
exam, the first half of the test is provided on the graph directly below and the
second half of the exam is on the next page.

Missed Test Questions (1-27)

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Missed Test Questions (28-54)

The most missed question was number 25; 93% of students answered it incorrectly.
To answer this question correctly, the students needed to the know properties of
squares; such as, diagonals bisect the angles and the diagonals are perpendicular.
With those facts they then needed to use the Pythagorean Theorem or qualities of
special right triangles. Number 26 was very similar to 25; 12 students or 86% of the
class missed that question. Number 26 needed the same knowledge base to solve;
it was the converse of number 25. Number 48 and 50 were also missed by 86% of
the class. These questions were word problems that required knowledge of angles of
elevation/depression and trig. An entire page of the test, numbers 46-53, was
devoted to similar word problems. Overall, students performed the worst on this
section. In addition to the problems already mentioned, numbers 30 and 31 were
missed by an alarming amount of students; 79% of students answered incorrectly.
These questions should have been among the easiest on the test, but students did
not fully read the instructions. They were asked to provide the trig ratio for a certain
angle and some proceeded to find the angle instead. The directions said Write your
answers as reduced fractions as a hint to answer with a ratio; 10 of the 11 students

Weachter 9
that answered incorrectly gave decimals. If it was the decimal that correctly
represented the desired ratio, I counted the answer correct. The questions
mentioned are the most missed questions on the test.
Students performed the best on the problems they could plug right into the
calculator, numbers 33-38. Considering each topic covered in the unit, the class did
the best on the Pythagorean Theorem questions, which was to be expected since it
was an SOL objective prior to geometry. The Pythagorean Theorem was covered in
detail on the first page of the exam, numbers 1-16.

Lesson Plans
My lesson plans and all materials used are included on Google Drive,
categorized by the day it was used. Each day involved bell-work, guided and
independent classwork, and homework. Since the pre-test scores were very low my
plans did not change as a result. Looking at the lack of prior knowledge of the
students coming into the unit, I planned on using 3 specific methods to help my
students reach the goal. The first method was scaffolding, building one concept on
the understanding of the last concept. This strategy is especially pertinent with trig,
because if a student does not understand the Sine function, he or she will definitely
not understand the subsequent concepts; Cosine, Tangent, or angles of
elevation/depression. At some point during each lesson, I tried to ask some review
questions and build from that; expressing this is kind of like that because
Continuing with the idea of scaffolding and suggestion of Mrs. Reedy, I went through
the trig ratios very slow, teaching one ratio per day. Because of the scaffolding, by
the time we got to the notes on tangent we were able to go much faster.

Weachter 10
The pace at which we could get through tangent allowed for a significant
portion of the time that day to be spent exploring different memory aids such as
songs and stories. Although this did help some students, it could have been better. I
kept using the term sohcahtoa and broke it down in pieces multiple times, but
only wrote it down all together one time. I hadnt realized that the students had not
connected the pieces until they had the test in hand and asked how to spell it. That
was a red flag. Immediately I knew that I should have let them see the phrase more
times. Throughout the unit I presented quite a few memory aids or extra tidbits to
help students remember the concepts. This included t-tables, a history about
Pythagoras and the origins of trig, and silly YouTube videos. Including these small
pieces will hopefully interest students that would not normally pay attention and
provide differentiation for different learning styles. I think all of this worked well, but
Ill have to be careful in the future not to overcomplicate topics for the sake of
creativity.
The last major strategy I used was sheer repetition. During the lessons that I
was teaching trig, I had students repeat key phrases multiple times in unison to help
them remember it. Although this was a good idea, I should have been more
consistent with it. For example, I prompted them to say opposite over hypotenuse
after I would say Sine of the angle equals I think the concept could have been
more ingrained if I had them say the whole phrase. Overall, students remembered
opposite over hypotenuse, but failed to remember how the rest of the problem was
set up. I should have had more guided practice that was formatted in the same way
before throwing in different ways to think about questions. The extension piece
should have been delayed until I knew every student could handle the more basic
questions. This strategy could be applied to much of the unit, but then I could run

Weachter 11
into the issue of not getting through all the needed information in the allotted
amount of time. I tried to frequently informally assess them by a thumb up or down
rating based on their understanding. If there was a majority of thumbs sideways or
down, I would repeat the explanation of a practice problem or pause the lesson and
try to figure how where the confusion is coming from, then approach the concept
from a different angle.
The next time I teach right triangles I would continue to use these strategies,
just with small alterations. Aside from the instructional methods, I would change a
few other things as well. First, I would triple check the copies I make and the
problems I make up. On more than one occasion, I, or my students, found mistakes
that leant to some confusion. This was completely my fault and was an unneeded
element in the classroom. I would have also made the test a little shorter. I think by
the time students finished the test they were simply worn out. I think that students
began to guess towards the end of the test, resulting in poorer scores and more
incorrect answers. When the test is three pages front and back it is easy to become
overwhelmed and flustered. Other than these aspects there is not a lot I would
change.
I had a lot of fun teaching this unit since there was some historical pieces and
more readily apparent real-world applications. As I was grading the tests I was
slightly deflated, since I thought the class would do better, but upon analysis the
grades seem fairly accurate with the students motivation and ability, with the
exception of a few students, who I know could do better.