Data Informed Practices Task 2

Introduction My instructional setting is in a first-grade classroom at an intercity elementary school. I teach in a Title 1 public school that serves approximately 572 students from transitional kindergarten to fifth grade. The demographics surrounding the school are low income with 100% of our student population qualifying for free and reduced school lunch. My current class consists of 27 students with a wide variety of learning and emotional needs. There are 8 English Language Learners at different levels of English acquisition, 2 students with speech IEPs, and 1 student with a learning disability that has an IEP. Two students are reading above grade level, five students are reading at grade level, and 20 students are below grade level reading. Educational Problem An educational problem I have encountered this year with my first-grade classroom is that many of my students have arrived to first grade with limited knowledge of letter names and letter sounds. This is concerning because students are to have mastered these skills in kindergarten prior to entering first grade. In first grade students are expected to have already mastered these skills so they can begin the process of reading and decoding, including learning spelling patterns. Without the basic skills of letter/sound recognition being mastered students will not be able to comprehend nor be successful with first grade standards. A plausible cause of this problem is due to the global pandemic which last year had students attending kindergarten through distance learning online. Students most likely did not have adequate support at home to keep students focused during live lessons and failed to practice skills when not in online classes. Problem Statement Students in my first-grade classroom have limited letter/sound identification with upper and lowercase letters. First grade students are to have mastered these skills in kindergarten prior to entering first grade. Students will need additional direct instruction and practice with letter/ sound identification each day so they are able to close the gap in their learning in order to move onto first grade level standards. Data Source The data source I will use to gather each students’ mastery of letter/sound identification is the ESGI progressing monitoring system which is provided by my district. ESGI allows teachers to assess students one-on-one while providing information on student progress. This program gives teachers the ability to analyze the quantitative data collected to drive instruction, inform parents on student progress, and differentiate instruction as needed. I will use 3 separate assessments on ESGI to assess students on their uppercase letter identification, lowercase letter identification, and lowercase letter sounds. These 3 assessments will be administered within the first 2 weeks of school then 4 times at the end of each quarter during the school year to assess student growth. The demographics of my classroom are that I currently have 27 students who come from diverse backgrounds in a lower class, impoverished community. Many of my students come from difficult home situations including homelessness. There are 8 students whose primary language is Spanish and are English Language Learners; including two students with no English skills. The remaining students in my class are English speaking. Two students in my class receive pull-out Speech services twice a week and one student with an IEP who also receives pull out services to address learning needs. The data I have collected is quantitative. The quantitative data I have collected will be used to assess student knowledge of upper and lowercase letter identification along with lowercase letter sounds. I began assessing my students during the first two weeks of school by pulling one student at a time to my desk while the rest of the class is working independently. Students come to my desk one at a time while I administer the assessment from my computer on ESGI. The program will show the student one letter at a time while I ask them the letter name. If the student knows the correct name I will press yes on the assessment, if they do not, I will press no. The letters are shown in random order. I will repeat this process with each of the three assessments. This quantitative data that I will collect directly relates to the problem I have identified and will allow me to analyze what letter names and sounds students still need further instruction on in order to progress to first grade standards and reading. Data Analysis Method At the conclusion of administering the three ESGI assessments to my 27 students, I used descriptive statistics to analyze the quantitative data. “Descriptive statistics are often generated through statistical analysis and include measures of central tendency and measures of variability.” (Tomal and Schwartz, 2020). Using descriptive statistics of the data I am able to find the mean of each assessment in order to address the learning gaps in my students’ knowledge of letter/sound recognition. The ESGI program formulates pie charts and bar graphs which provides a visual picture of the data collected. I am able to quickly identify patterns or trends for certain letters or sounds that students are struggling with. Summary of Results The summary of my analysis of the data results is that when these tests were administered during the first two weeks of school as baseline data, the mean of students who knew all the letters and sounds was 29%. When administering these same assessments approximately 2 months later, the mean or average of students who know all their letters and sounds went from 29% to 59%. This would indicate that the mean of students who do not know their letters and sounds went from 71% to 41% during approximately 8 weeks of instruction. Of the 11 students who have not mastered all 26 letter names and sounds, 65% know less than half of the letter names and sounds. The remaining 35% are struggling with 5 or less letter names and/or sounds. The data also shows that students are most struggling with lowercase letter name identification, followed by uppercase letter name identification, and lastly, lowercase letter sounds. The most common letter names that are unknown are y, e, h, n, l with the most common known being x, z, o. The most common letter sounds unknown are n, i, u, e, q with the most common sounds knowing being z, c, k, x, s. Visual Representation Conclusions I can conclude after analyzing the collected quantitative data that the mean of students who do not know all 26 letters and sounds is 41%. Upon further reflection, the mean of students who cannot identify at least half of the letters and sounds is 26%. The letter names that are most unknown are y, e, h, n, l and the letter sounds that are most unknown are n, i, u, e, q. My two students who have no English skills do no know any letter names however know some letter sounds with visual hand movements used as a support during the assessment. Without the visual support both students did not know any letter sounds just by being shown the letter. The data also shows that the mean of my English Language Learners that know less than 50% of the letter names and sounds is 62%. The mean of my English speaking students who know less than 50% of the letter names and sounds is 16%. Recommendations Based on the data collected, I would provide two recommendations to drive continuous improvement in students gaining letter name/letter sound recognition in order to progress to basic reading skills at the first-grade level. The first recommendation would be to continue daily review of the letter names and sounds during ELA instruction first thing in the morning. This would include videos where students are acting out the letters and sounds. In addition, add two additional times throughout the day where students will use the letter cards to verbally say and use a hand movement to name the letter and its sound. The second recommendation would be to pull small groups for 10 minutes each day to practice the most common unknown letters for each group of students. These groups would be fluid and adjusted as needed. Weekly progress monitoring of these groups will assist in modifying instruction and moving of students in or out of a particular group. By implementing these strategies this will close the gaps in learning for the 41% or 11 students who currently are low in letter names and letter sounds identification.