1. PHS CARP Stacey, Cameron, Matt, Cat, Brennan

4. Strategy, Rationale, and Justification 1. Key Words Circle the important words that show what the question is asking. 2. Rephrase Test Questions Student puts question in his/her own words Our strategy may ameliorate test-taking ability for all disciplines which may lead to improvement in standardized tests Peer-reviewed research supports the specific test-taking strategies that we have chosen (Chittooran & Miles 2001)

5. Methods Administering pre-test of test-taking strategies Explicitly teach strategies (one per week) Continue with strategies throughout the week(s) Observe class and collect student work to look for strategy use Administer post-test Run T-tests to look for significance

6. Data Collection Plan

7. Pre-Post Assessment Used a LikertScale questionnaire and configured our survey results so that a “5” was always positive Sample question: 1. How often do you circle or underline parts of a test question to help you answer that question? 1 – Never 2 – Not often 3 – Sometimes 4 – Very often 5 - Always

8. Pre-Post Analysis Used a unpaired T-Test to analyze any significance of student responses between pre/post-tests Compared both sets of test results for each class using a T-Test (alpha level 0.05) Compiled data across all surveyed classes and compared pre and post results using a T-Test (alpha level 0.05)

9. Class Data – Ms. Meyer 1st period standard biology n=15 Pretest Average = 18.5 Posttest Average = 17.8 p > 0.05 so the treatment effect was not significant This means that implementing implicit and explicit instruction with our two test-taking strategies did not produce a significant effect.

10. Observations/Student Work I observed very few students using the strategies during class work. Results were slightly better when I looked at students quizzes and observed students while testing which was encouraging. Ex. Organelle vs. Process

11. Class Data – Mr. Stone Data from 4 Periods of Academic English n = 76 Pre Test Average = 16.50 Post Test Average = 17.42 p = 0.034 Since p < 0.05, this means that implementing implicit and explicit instruction in our two test-taking strategies did produce a significant effect.

12. Observations/Student Work I observed a moderate amount of students using the strategies during daily class work. However, during exams when students were reminded of the strategies and encouraged to use them I observed a greater number of students applying the strategies.

13. Class Data – Mr. Davis Data from 3 periods of Honors/Pre-AP World History n= 72 Pre-Test Average= 17.6 Post-Test Average= 18.92 p= 0.14529 p>0.05, so the treatment did not produce a significant result. Note: a significance was found in my 6th period (p= 0.00405)

14. Observations/Student Work I observed a moderate amount of students using the strategies during class work. However, some of these students were using these strategies before explicit instruction. I was unable to observe student behavior on tests and quizzes as none were taken during the project’s 4-week timeline.

15. Class Data – Ms. Holland 4th and 7th period AP Literature and 5th/6th double-period English Standard N = 37 Pre-test average = 17.702 Post-test average = 16.783 p> 0.05 so the findings were not significant Implementing two explicit test-taking strategies did not produce significant results.

16. Observations/Student Work Some students used strategy #1, but it is unclear whether they used this strategy prior to our intervention or not. Students were reluctant to even attempt strategy #2. I observed some students in the English 10 Standard class use strategy #1 while taking Benchmark #1, a county-wide multiple-choice test. I observed some AP Literature students using strategy #1 on the practice AP tests that I distributed to the class, but they only took vocabulary tests during the 3-week period of our intervention.

17. Class Data – Mr. Leischer Data from 3 Periods of Academic English n = 55 Pre Test Average = 16.62 Post Test Average = 16.56 p = 0.47 Since p > 0.05, this means that implementing implicit and explicit instruction in our two test-taking strategies did not produce a significant effect.

18. Observations/Student Work I observed a small amount of student using the strategies we taught. However, most of these students were already using similar strategies before instruction. Observation of strategies took place during district-level benchmark exam and HSA-style question practice sessions.

19. Conclusions We found that the overall effect of our treatment effect is not significant n= 256 ; p = 0.0581

20. Conclusions It is unclear whether our test strategies improved student performance or not. Evidence is mixed about whether students use the strategies that we taught. Because of the way we collected our data and differences in n numbers were unable to do the question by question analysis needed to tease apart the data

21. Implications for Research Repeat with more time and greater n Is there a difference between subjects? Introduce in earlier grade Look at differences in test scores comparing students who were taught/used the strategies compared to a control group