UJMA decided to focus their use of Reflective Learning on their Grade 9 students. Starting the diagnostics in May 2021, they ran into some ICT issues in their third term. After a technician had sorted their issues, they progressed well in the catch-up component of the programme. They timetabled the programme to ensure that every student had the opportunity to interact with the software.
Increased understanding
No. of concepts per topic
Numbers
Fractions
Measurement
Data Literacy
Problem-solving
Patterns & Algebra
Space & Shape
20
20
11
6
5
11
8
Results Comparisons
Baseline
Latest
Thread
Ave. Grade
% at Level 9
Ave. Grade
% at Level 9
Numbers
8.0
66%
8.6 (+0.6)
85% (+19%)
Fractions
5.0
9%
6.4 (+1.4)
49% (+40%)
Measurement
5.9
13%
6.8 (+0.9)
42% (+28%)
Data Literacy
8.2
56%
8.7 (+0.5)
80% (+24%)
Problem-solving
6.5
21%
7.4 (+0.9)
52% (+31%)
Patterns & Algebra
3.3
0%
4.5 (+1.2)
6% (+6%)
Space & Shape
5.2
5%
6.1 (+0.9)
31% (+26%)
The graphs and table above demonstrate that the UJMA learners have improved their conceptual understanding considerably (in the graphs, yellow shows the baseline results; green shows the improvement). This is especially true for Fractions (+1.4) and Patterns & Algebra (+1.2) . There have also been significant improvements in Measurement (+0.9) , Problem-solving (+0.9) and Space & Shape (+0.9) .
Since Numbers and Fractions consist of half of all concepts, these are of utmost importance. Impressively, 85% of learners are at the required level for Numbers (+19%) and a massive increase in Fractions (+40%) sees almost half at the required level. There have also been large increases for Measurement (+28%) and Space & Shape (+26%) .
Speed of catch-up
It is also important to measure the speed at which students are catching up. When taking into consideration that UJMA had been implementing Reflective Learning for approximately six-month, the normal rate of learning would be 0.5 grade-levels within. As such, anything higher than this would indicate an acceleration of learning.
Grade-level Improvement
Improvements
% of learners
Comment
0.0
30%
No engagement with programme
0.1-0.5
17%
Low rate of learning
0.5-0.9
11%
Slightly higher than normal rate of learning
1.0 – 1.4
17%
2x normal rate of learning
1.5 – 1.9
11%
3x normal rate of learning
2.0 +
16%
4x normal rate of learning or more
The table above shows that 53% of learners demonstrated an acceleration in their learning, with 16% improving at 4-times the normal rate of learning . This shows that learners can catch-up far quicker than traditionally expected.
Focusing on those UJMA learners that have demonstrated engagement in the process, they had effectively “completed” 63% of the catch-up process after the baseline assessments. After two terms of running the catch-up process, those learners are now sitting at 77% completion.
At this rate of completion, the cohort of learners would be expected to complete the full catch-up process (ie. every learner up to the require grade-level for every thread) in a further nine months .
Improved marks
Term
1
2
3
4
Grade Average
63%
67%
71%
TBC
The improvements in conceptual understanding correlates with an increase in grade-level marks (8% over two terms) . This is significant, especially when taking into account that the cohort has not finished their catch-up process yet.