B1+FIAE+Chapter+6


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Paul Santamore
toc When designing a test or any other type of assessment for their students, the teacher must continue to differentiate, but also must make the test bearable for the students. One way to make this happen is to provide a variety of questions and prompts for the students. Students want and need the tests to be efficient and easy to complete. By making the tests this way the teacher is saving the students immense amounts of confusion and is also making the test easier to grade and get back to the students in a timely fashion. The easiest way to give the students the advantage during assessment is to make everything clear and concise. Clarity makes students less stressed and helps them to perform to their potential rather than fail miserable because of anxiety. I will always attempt to format my assessment in a simple and concise fashion, because I want my students to have complete faith in their answers and their hard work throughout the unit or lesson. There is no reason for me to push failure upon my students after both parties have put in such hard work in the lead up to the assessment. My tests will always assess what I having been leading my students towards during class. There will be no trick questions because once again there is no point in leading them astray from my intended understandings and our previously discussed and researched goals and aspirations.

Leigh Welch
This chapter is about finding the right questions to ask on a test. These questions vary from multiple choice, true/false, fill-in-the-blank, short answer, short essay. These are good formats but not technically good for every situation. All have good qualities when used correctly. The book talks about some questions being worded funny, where the student is just trying to figure out what is on the teachers mind and that is how they are answering. That is the wrong way to use that type of question. True or False questions can also be funny according to wording. If you have too much information in them then the student could get confused upon which part they are supposed to be focusing on. I had never put much thought into which types of questions you should use at certain times. When I was reading this chapter all I could think about was taking history tests in high school. One of my teachers gave us ten page tests with only multiple choice questions, after which we had to write two short essays from three given prompts. I never thought those tests were really fun, even though I did feel like I learned. Anatomy tests on the other hand, were very fun. We had definitions, fill in the blank, multiple choice, short answer, and sometimes draw a picture. I did feel liked I learned from these kinds of tests too. I think it really was dependent upon who the teacher was and what fit for the course.

Bianca Stoutamyer
This chapter about test questions gave information I liked and other information that I thought would make tests easier for the students. For example, giving the students “T’s” and “F’s” to circle during a true/false portion of a test I would hope that the students could write their own responses. Another thing that I thought wasn’t necessary for a teacher to do was put matching portions of a test in a specific order, single words on the right with sentences on the left. Whether the single words are on the left or the right shouldn’t matter the student still has to read the sentences either way. I did like the idea of doing multiple smaller tests throughout the grading period rather than one large test. To me this allows the students to know more clearly what they are studying for and information is fresher in their minds. Making tests more fun for the students was also an interesting idea for me; it would be extremely easy to create questions with student’s names and favorite activities in them instead of doing standard questions that the students cannot relate to. I would also make questions that have clearly been talked about repeatedly throughout the unit. Why give the students objectives to study if you do not clearly ask questions about the objectives? Other than that I would also include an essay question on my tests that asks the student something along the lines of the following, “Write a question about something you studied that wasn’t on the test and answer it”. This type of question not only lets you see how the students prepared for the test but it also allows for them to practice writing their own questions.

Carinne Haigis
The author explains in this chapter how to write and create test questions that are the fairest demonstrators of whether or not the students understand the material. This is an excellent resource chapter of the book for a teacher to read and consider when it comes time to create an exam. One of the techniques the author recommends using is to provide a combination of “forced choice” style test questions with “constructed response”. Forced choice sections of tests are ones that allow a student to choose an answer based on a selection of responses the teacher offers. Constructed responses require the student to come up with the information completely on his or her own and figure out how to apply his or her knowledge to best answer the question. Of this approach, Wormeli explains: “By using a variety of questions and prompts, we get a better picture of students’ mastery” (Wormeli 75). When creating exam questions, it is crucial to provide a variety so that all students have the opportunity to demonstrate their understanding in a way that more appropriately corresponds with how they learn and think. Later on in this chapter, Wormeli asks: “If students are asking us to hurry up and give them the test before they forget the material, are we teaching for long-term learning,” (Wormeli 84)? I was particularly interested in this question because I can think of examples in my own school experience when teachers have given a test on a specific day so that the information would still be fresh in the students’ minds. While this seems to be a good practice, it is an interesting concept to consider that if the students have truly mastered the necessary material, they ought to be able to demonstrate this at any given point in time.

Allison Reynolds
Now that we have discussed tiering and assessing, this chapter talks about how to apply it to testing. This section speaks about how not to have timed testing and I fully have to agree with this. I know, for me, taking a timed test means having to spend time figuring out how much time I have for each question. What happens if a student goes to slow, or rushes through to try to answer all the questions? Their results are worth nothing because it is not displaying their knowledge. Timed tests were so stressful for me that I could not imagine doing that to my students in my classroom. One asset I think would apply to my classroom is having multiple small tests or quizzes over time instead of one large one. Students could use these to study as well as test themselves to see if they know the material. Many of my professors do this now and it helps relieve some stress for me, and that is dropping quiz grades. I think that even though the book doesn’t quite mention it, it is a good idea. Students have off days or bad nights or just need to take it and try again later. By dropping the quiz grades good students don’t have to suffer for one mistake. This chapter also mentioned having constructed answers in tests. I want to try to have that in my classes so that it isn’t just solving equations. Some students may need to write out answers or even explain steps in words. I also want students to think critically about math instead of just being able to solve equations and this type of testing may help with that. I want to be able to try that in my classroom.

Kellie Sanborn
I feel like we have been repeatedly told in this class and readings for this class that traditional tests are not very useful and not very accurate, and I must say that I agree. What I am wondering, then, is why there was an entire chapter on creating “good test questions.” Is there even such a thing as a good test question? If I were ever to give a test in my class, it would certainly not contain true or false questions. It also would not contain multiple choice. Why? Because I was in high school once (not very long ago at all), and I know how easy it was to figure out the system and be graded from that knowledge rather than actual content. The author seemed to harp at some points on answer order (TTFFFT is better than TFTFTF... obviously!), but if there have been issues already identified with questions like these, why even bother using them?! If anything, tests seem most functional and accurate when they involve the bigger concepts, an excellent example being the revised version of the Renaissance question from this chapter. Still, I see traditional tests as an impractical display of knowledge because, like the author says, it is often quickly forgotten when it is used simply in preparing for a written test. A written test also only encompasses one, maybe two, of the eight multiple intelligences, and is therefore rendered an inaccurate measure of most students’ actual abilities. While I did appreciate the prompt suggestions, I found this chapter to be almost completely the opposite of what we have already learned about assessment, and just generally disappointing.

Chris Whitney
Chapter six of Fair Isnt Always Equal describes what makes a good test question. Its finally test time. So much differiented instruction has been put to use so that all the students can grasp the same ideas and concepts. The only thing standing between them and passing is a test. It would be a shame if a student could not pass the test not because they did not know the answers, but because the test was presented in a way that they could not understand. This chapter stressed that the presentation of the test is important and correlates to how student will do. For instance having prompts clearly stated in a way that helps guide students answers toward what the teacher wants instead of students having to guess what the teacher might want the answer to look like. Or sometimes teachers have a tendency to write too vague multiple choice answers that leave students confused as to which answer to pick. This chapter also discussed how teachers should mix up forced choice questions (students pick teachers answers as in true false or multiple choice options) and constructed questions where students have to produce the answer themselves.

Mel Christensen
It is very important for teachers to be able to create meaningful and effective tests. Testing is sometimes a controversial subject because it can be approached in many different ways and can be used to measure different types of achievement. Testing is a prominent part of the modern school system and needs to be used effectively. Tests should challenge students to think critically, be creative, and apply the knowledge and skills they have practiced; tests are a measure of what students can do with what they have learned and been taught. Teachers should take responsibility for developing appropriate and concise tests that present and intellectual challenge and are free of misleading, inaccurate, or repetitive questions. Students sense when they are given a bad test because it will be confusing or seem foreign to them. The expectations of the assessment should be clear and students should be familiar with the content. Tiering tests is something that teachers who are working with a diverse class need to consider. If lessons and assignments throughout a unit have been tiered it makes sense that the culminating assessment would need to reflect the tiering that has been present prior to the assessment. This can be done by allowing students to choose a certain number of questions to answer out of each section and allowing them to determine what they know and what fits their ability level or by labeling questions with difficulty levels and directing students towards particular levels. Students working at every level should feel appropriately challenged by the intellectual content of the test.

Ashton Carmichael
The section of this chapter that dealt with timed testing was especially appealing. I can see why giving out timed tests would be harmful. After all, it is impossible to explain everything you know about a subject in a designated time because of many factors; students focus on the time remaining, they try to get all the questions answered in the allotted time and many stress out when they see the time is running low. On the other hand, the class period is only so long and we only have so much time to cover material. I do agree that in most situations timed tests will not accurately represent the extent of the students’ knowledge. I like the idea of adding students’ names to the test, and the humorous puns as well. I agree that if we were to do this on our tests that we should make sure the students have seen this before and are not thrown off guard. In his section “Include Common Errors as Candidates for Responses,” Wormeli addresses the concept of placing terminology that is a common mistake. I think this is a great idea once we get away from the timed test notion. I think that if a student is being timed on a test, they would be more likely to make these trivial errors because they are rushing and see something familiar. In his section “Use Smaller Tests Over Time,” Wormeli makes a good point. He states that students can have a variety of factors influencing them on the final test day of a unit. So, by giving smaller tests throughout the entire unit would equal out to be a fairer representation of their knowledge. One previous experience I had with a teacher who gave out multiple assessments was my Geometry teacher in high school; this teacher would drop the lowest quiz grade and lowest homework grade at the end of the ranking period because “everyone has at least one bad day.”

Kaite Bukauskas
Developing good test questions is a skill a teacher can practice to ensure that a test or quiz is being created to optimize the potential of the test-taking student. This chapter suggests using a variety of the types of questions being used on the test. These types of questions can include true/false responses, fill in the missing word, multiple choice questions, essays, short answers, and demonstration/performance. By utilizing a mix of test question types, a teacher can get a better idea of a student’s mastery of the content area. The layout of a test should be clear and concise to minimize student confusion. This could be done by ensuring columns are aligned to one another, and true false sections have a T/F to circle to eliminate confusion. Teachers can attempt to further engage students into a test or quiz by making it fun, such as using student names from the class in the test questions, or cultures. Something that stood out to me in this chapter was the concept that tests,quizzes, and assessment in general should be conducted in the same manner that the content was originally taught to the students. The texts sums this up by stating “if we teach one way, we test that way”. This reinforces what we learned in the multiple intelligence reading on chapter ten, reminding us that if students are being taught using the various forms of intelligence and learning styles, then the assessment and testing period should also follow those creative forms, versus teaching in multiple intelligences and following it up with standardized testing.

Jason B
This chapter is about creating tests for students. Teachers should create tests that challenge the student’s knowledge. However, teachers should not create tests that are unbearable to take. The test should be challenging in a way that gets the student to combine all of their knowledge about the material. It is like spinning plates. The teacher should make assessments that allow the student to build upon what they already know. When spinning plates, you start with spinning one. As you find that you can handle one, you add another, and then another, and another, and so on as you get more comfortable with the previous plates. As a math teacher, I will design questions that get my students to think, and to build upon their previous knowledge. This strategy will help the students relate one topic of my material with another while spinning more than one plate. I do not believe in giving simple tests with true or false questions, or matching questions because I want to see the students apply the knowledge. Multiple choice and true or false give the student the option to luckily guess at the problem. This may help the student’s grade, but it does not help me (the teacher) figure out what the student knows and what they do not. In my opinion, it creates a false sense of achievement. It is also important to not time the students. Timing students can get frustrating, especially when I am asking them to really think about my material.

Megan Hoffman
I’m not entirely sure why this chapter is prevalent to what we are learning at this stage of our teaching careers, since we aren’t even going to talk about making tests yet. But, regardless this chapter had different tips in how to write good test questions so that our students won’t be so anxious and nerved up when it comes test time. Some examples of these tips are; use a variety of questions/prompts, double recording of test responses, make prompts clear. Some methods in this chapter really resonated with me because they addressed what exactly made me hate some teachers’ tests. The section entitled “Avoid Confusing Negatives” made me say Yes! I always hated when teachers would word questions in confusing negatives in questions like “Which of these is not a negative impact on society during the Civil War”. Questions like this would annoy me so bad! I could never figure them out and often got confused on the correct answer. Another thing I always hated was addressed in the very beginning; I always hated it when the question started with “Pick the //most// true answer”. It was like those questions are built to trick people! One of my favorite things that I want to incorporate is fun test questions that allow students to be creative. For example I love history simulation, so instead of boring essay questions I’d have them write a journal entry from someone in that time period. You still get the information you are looking for, but it is exponentially more entertaining for both the teacher and the student.