Data Analysis

Right at the end of 2015, I went through a personal journey which took my thoughts and energy away from school. I did my job, loved my students and sent them off at the end of the year with my mind elsewhere. I completed some of this data analysis at the end of last year, however due to the aforementioned circumstances, it has taken me until now to think about how to present this information on my blog.

Reading Data

I analysed the reading data of my class and my team, looking specifically at how much progress each student had made. As a team leader, I was pleased with the general trends and progress of our students. However as a classroom teacher, I was saddened to see the lack of progress of some of my students. Still, the real value in looking at data is thinking about the story behind each class, each teacher, and each student.

As a team, 54% of our Year 2 students achieved AT or ABOVE the National Standard for reading based solely on their Running Record score. This is promising, but still something we would like to work on. I believe that we will have more success at this in 2016 as less time will need to be assigned initially to teacher and student learning of iPad skills and routines.



In my own class 40% of students achieved AT or ABOVE the National Standard for reading. I did not get acceleration from the number of students who I would have liked to see accelerate. Three students made more than 1 year of progress from December 2014 to December 2015. Next time, it would be interesting to include progress from February to December in a single year.



Impressively, one teacher in my team achieved acceleration from 13 of her 24 students (54%). This is something to be celebrated. Looking at this difference in acceleration, I believe the largest contributing factor to this was the difference in special and behavioural needs between our two classes.

I wrote earlier in this blog about my realisation (with the help of a friendly observation from my Principal!) that I was trying too hard to extend my students' learning (using creative tasks, changing tasks frequently, having very high expectations of them). While I will always continue to believe these things to be important, I think I lost sight of the value of repetition, consistency, and independent learning.

My class in 2015 had a number of special needs students who took a lot of time and energy. I loved them dearly and wanted to give them the best chance of educational success as possible. However, looking at the class as a whole, I think it is also very important to be cognisant of how your time is spent - are you using it wisely? Are all students getting a fair deal?

In 2016, I plan to be more aware of how my time is getting spent and which students are using the majority of it. I want to create tasks which build upon one another, so that the learning is not always new and unfamiliar to them. If I have Team Leader Release timetabled in the morning, I would like for my core programme to carry on with the release teacher, rather than have a completely different programme.

OTJ Data

My OTJ data from my reports shows good steady progress across the class. Each individual story needs to be told, however, to fill in the gaps that the data can't present.

My class data:



A number of the students who were still WELL BELOW the National Standard at the end of the year have special learning needs. These students have had individual learning programmes, as well as specialist support and teacher aide support. In 2016, I want to prioritise the students who are just below the National Standard in reading, writing and maths to see what kind of shift I can make with them. Furthermore, I would like to focus more too on the top groups of students in each area to see how far they can be extended.

Year 2 data: