Analyzing Student Work

As I mentioned in an earlier post, "Creating Challenge," the second half of the school year is a time that tends to be rich with inquiry into teaching practice. Mentees have identified and reflected on their goals, have developed a sense of flow in their classrooms, and have a clearer understanding of the scope and sequence of their unit planning. The efficacy of those unit plans, as well as potential differentiated refinement, is powerfully revealed by looking at student work.

During the second half of the school year, I make a concerted effort to look at student work as often as possible. I'm finding that in each mentoring session as of late, when a colleague brings up a point about student understandings or misunderstandings, I'm asking them if they have a few pieces of student work that can demonstrate their point. The work itself provides the evidence around which our problem-solving conversation can focus and proceed. Often looking at only 3 or four pieces of student work that reveal a range of achievement can lead to direct next steps a teacher can take with regard to instruction, lesson planning, checks for student understanding, or professional development.

As we underscore in our mentor trainings and forums, the process of analyzing student work involves these key steps:

• Establishing the standard for student work
• Analyzing the work and sorting the work according to demonstration of achievement of the standard (Far Below, Approaching, Meeting, Exceeding)
• Identifying the performance of students (both what they can and cannot do; what they understand and do not understand based on the work)
• Naming the students' learning needs based on these findings.
• Answering this question: How can I differentiate instruction to meet those learning needs?

In this way we plan with students' actual learning needs in mind rather than what we "think" is the next right step for instruction.

Troubleshooting Student Work Analysis:

• Focus Students! Remember to always include the work of focus students in any student work analysis. The actual evidence of their work produces a non-judgmental evidence based entry point to address the specific learning needs of language learners and special needs students. Their work also consistently opens up reflection concerning effective pedagogical strategies to provide equitable access to the content standards for all students.
• Establishing buy in - sometimes mentees are nervous about looking at student work - it can bring up a lot of vulnerability about their instruction. It's important to be aware of this and sensitive to our mentee's responses. I pay careful attention to entry points through which I can suggest looking at student work. The entry points often sound like this: "My students seemed to be very confused about today's assignment and I'm not sure why...;" "Even though I aligned my learning targets to the final assessment, my students didn't do so well on the test. I'm really frustrated about it...; "I tried out a new instructional strategy today. Some of the students were really engaged, but some of them weren't...." My response sounds something like this: "I have a hunch their work will show us some of the answers to your questions. Can you think of an assignment that we can look in one of our next sessions?"
• Finding the time - a complete Analysis of Student Work (looking at a whole class set of work) takes time. Sometimes it can take two sessions. It is important to put the Analysis of Student work on your calendars and on your Collaborative Logs. Teacher's next step - pull together the work; Mentor's next step - follow through on doing the analysis.
• Getting through it - as a mentor, it's important to be intentional about monitoring the time and moving on to the next step of the analysis to get to the important last step of differentiation. I recommend having a clock front and center and maintaining focus on each step of the process for a set amount of time. Establish the amount of time for each chunk at the start of your session together. If I know our time will be limited, I ask my mentee to select out 2 samples of student work that demonstrate each of the Far Below, Approaching, Meeting, and Exceeding categories.
• Having the Work to Analyze - Some teachers use binders and all the student work is in that binder. If this is the case, I ask them to have the students turn in the work that we are going to analyze, ask the teacher to photocopy it and then return it to their students. Sometimes the work is an essay and teachers want to get them back to their students promptly - and there is a lot of work to copy. In this case, I ask them to choose 2 samples of student work that demonstrate each of the Far Below, Approaching, Meeting, and Exceeding categories and copy them. Sometimes the work is an exit ticket and the teachers read them and toss them - that one is easy - simply remind your mentee to remember to keep the exit tickets for the analysis.

Any other pointers on troubleshooting the Analysis of Student Work are welcome - please write a comment.

Of course, looking at student work is important and useful at any time of the year. It is perhaps the most powerful conversation topic to put on the table to move teacher practice. If you haven't analyzed student work yet, I encourage you to establish an agreement with your mentee to do so in the coming weeks.

Thanks for reading!

Alison.