Data Analysis

Manar Karaja
August 20, 2017

The data analysis task was completed in a preschool facility-based special needs classroom and with the
full day students. The classroom is made up of three girls and five boys ages three to five. All the students
have Individualized Education Plans (IEPs) with weaknesses in different developmental area. Three
students are half-day students who leave at 11:50, and the other five are full-day who leave at 2:10. There
are two students who are combination students which means they attend two days in the facility-based
classroom and three days in the general education setting.

The standard I choose to teach is CD-SC4.4a Explores and describes position and movement of
objects and toys. A standard which goes with the three-week long unit about transportation.

During the first week of the transportation unit, I gave the students a pretest to determine their levels of
knowledge of the vocabulary words pull and push and to determine their level of understanding of these
two terms. The pretest was administered one-on-one by the lead teacher (Ms. Manar). The test was a
combination of two parts: Part one: response to verbal questions what does it mean to pull/push/push and
pull something? And name something that you can pull, push, and push and pull. The second part was
sorting of pictures into three categories: pull, push, or pull and push.

The results of the pretest are as follows:

None of the students could explain what it means to push, pull, or push/pull. Not even EW who
has large vocabulary and good knowledge of scientific facts about space and elements.
Two out of the five students did not understand the commands pull and push. For these two
students, I used real objects (car, doll, and chair) and gave the command pull and push. They
still did not know what to do.
Two out of the five students gave examples of things that can be pushed and pulled.
An adjustment to make when doing the pretest is to reduce the pictures for sorting from ten to six.
The students got tired after gluing the first few pieces, and they were more focused on gluing all
the pictures than on correctly sorting them. Another adjustment for the sorting test is to model the
sorting activity in order for the students to understand the steps of the activity.

Based on the assessment, the students could be broken into two groups. The first group is the beginners
group: they do not know or understand the terms push or pull. The second group is the intermediate
group: the students have the basic vocabulary push and pull but do not have the deeper understanding
of what they mean and how to explain the motion.

There were no misconceptions identified at this point. What was identified was lack of very basic skills,
such as, simple vocabulary, ability to respond to questions, and sorting.