Creating Good Test Questions
I think the biggest thing that I agreed with in this chapter
was the portion about timed tests. Ken O’Connor said, “No one professionally
would ever try to collapse their knowledge into one hour of intense performance.”
As an individual who liked to take ample time on tests, I felt cheated when a
teacher would say, “You have an hour to do these 15 problems.” I would rush
myself and not do the work to the best of my ability; sometimes even leaving
problems unanswered. In my classroom I will make sure that students have plenty
of time to complete assessments.
Putting a little fun into assessments is beneficial for
students who get overly stressed. This gives students a little something to
look forward to on the dreaded “test day.” Some students do far better testing
than others, and as teachers we should do what we can to help them without
really helping them.
Some multiple choice questions are deceiving and
inappropriate to ask. Asking students a question that could be interpreted as
a, “What’s on the teacher’s mind,” question is not appropriate to ask. This does
not test their knowledge of the content. We also want to make sure that we are
not trying to trick students by the wording of our problems. We want to know
what their mastery is of the material being tested on, not their mastery of
being able to decipher a question.
I was a bit appalled when Wormeli talked about bringing just
the answers home for grading purposes. Never in my classroom would I give a
grade solely based on whether or not the answer was correct or not. I want to
see students’ work and their thought processes, giving points where points are
deserved.
No comments:
Post a Comment