Analysis of Post Test Question 2 Rough Draft

Lincoln Elementary Snookerpuss Intervention

For the second post test question in the intervention, the students were asked to create a graph of some given data points, and make a prediction from extrapolating the data.

There does not seem to be any correlation between the students’ performance on the second post test question and the treatment group they were in. This question relied more heavily on the classroom discussion about graphing. Even students that did not participate in the VR portion of the intervention had reasonable success with the graphing. 4/7 of the trace group created successful graphs. ¾ of the blip and 1/5 of the map group were successful. A successful answer was one in which the students correctly graphed the data, and made a correct prediction that was supported by their graph. We are dealing with a very small group though, and I would consider results in this area inconclusive.

It seems that the most common error students made with the graphing, was to only allocate space on their graph for the data we provided them. Often there was not enough room left for the extrapolation. The next most common errors were to not allocate enough vertical space, or to not use even horizontal spacing. After going through the post tests, it looks like the lesson would benefit greatly from actually setting up the graph we used with the class. When we performed the intervention, the graph that we used to plot data was already set up, and labeled for the students. I believe that taking a few minutes of the lesson to walk the students through setting up the graph would improve the educational value of the lesson.

Half of the students, spanning all the treatment groups, produced reasonably good looking graphs that supported a correct answer. With the limited amount of graphing experience the students had before the lesson, I think the post test results are very encouraging.