Over the first couple months of school we observed students that are unsuccessful with formal quizzes and tests in the class, but showed understanding during formative assessments and class assignment. Since these students are successful in classwork assignments, we came to the conclusion that it could be lack of effort being put into classroom quizzes and tests. We looked for underlying issues that could contribute to this such as not taking their time, anxiety, or learned behavior of not trying when not receiving help. To test these theories, we put into place the Effort Tracker Tool. This tool holds students accountable for their effort on assignments or quizzes, because they have to explain how much effort they put into at the end of their quiz or test. We selected 5 students that typically put in little to no effort on classroom quizzes and tests. These 5 students were tracked for 4 weeks using this tool after each quiz or test. In the end, we found that this tool worked for two students, made some improvements for 2 other students, but was unsuccessful for 1 student. We found that the students that gave the most thoughtful responses on their effort tracker tool were the two most successful with this research. The other students may need additional supports along with this strategy to show true improvement. Such supports could include extrinsic motivators or a goal setting sheet for students to set their own goals for improvement on their next quiz or test.
