2 posts tagged “teaching tests”
Imagine for a moment that you read on a seventh-grade level.
Justify the author's decision to make the revision by selecting the statement below that accurately evaluates the effect of the connotation of the word vow on the author's purpose.
This is question 14, a typical question on Mississippi's 80-item multiple-choice Subject Area Testing Program state-mandated test. It's preceded by a five-line excerpt from a poem that substitutes the word vow for promise in its first line as a possible revision. The four distractors (what we call the ABCD choices in test-world) suggest ways that the word vow might or might not affect the mood or tone of the poem, along with several iterations of possible author's purposes. Passing the test is required for high school gradation.
You are a high school sophomore who has most likely passed your English classes by memorizing rules and learning by rote; taking multiple-choice tests that involve simple identification or recognition. You sometimes get confused about which is the adjective or noun in a sentence.
You are largely unable to read silently for more than 10 minutes at a time. Perhaps you simply know how to call words. Most of the test reading items are poetry or nonfiction about such topics as bat-keeping or igloo-building. Most are three to five pages in your 8.5 x 11 test booklet.
You probably had Hot Cheetos and Gatorade for breakfast. Or perhaps for dinner, and then skipped breakfast because you were too tired, because your mother asked you to get up at 5:00 to iron the uniform she wears to serve at the Piccadilly.
So no, giving multiple choice tests is not a cop-out. I give multiple choice tests in my English II class because it's the only way my students will learn how to unpack questions like this one. I also have them plan Everest expeditions, and make news-cast videos about parrots who find treasure after house fires.
I've changed my thinking about tests -- exams specifically. Those 90-minute quarter exams I'm required to give every four and a half weeks. The district requirements dictate these exams count as 25 percent of the quarter grade. Yikes. My students, even the best ones, were failing or nearly failing, and I was curving and swerving the scores to jigger a passing grade for report cards of students I knew should pass.
At the same time, I've done away with the infamous Binder Check, that time suck and germ festival all English teachers endure each grading period.
These two decisions are, of course, related.
As is true of so many aspects of teaching in the Delta, the bad habits some students exhibit everywhere are rampant in our classrooms. Far too many students are easily defeated and will run through a 50-item test in 10 minutes barely glancing at the questions, not reading the passages, and marking willy-nilly on their answer sheet. (Because I teach English II, I am required to give all exams in multiple-choice format to prepare for the state test. ) I realized during a 10-question open-notes pop quiz the other day that if they have their notes they take a much longer time completing the test, and do much better as a result.
I'm standing here watching my second-block class flip through their binders as they determine text structure, author's purpose, the best conclusion sentence, the most effective thesis statement, how to revise a sentence to use an object complement, and the difference between imply and infer. zIf this is the first time they've looked back at those notes and worksheets -- fine. Whatever. The point is that they learn it. When they learn it is less crucial. As long as they learn it before they leave my class.
So they now have an incentive to keep their binders organized in the Do Now, vocabulary, grammar, writing, and literature sections -- not loose in their backpacks, in their Chemistry notebook, or all crammed into the front pocket of the English binder. If the true purpose of the binder check is to ensure they are organizing materials and able to find what they need (and not to just to provide a free passing grade for otherwise failing students) then this fulfills that case.
I'll still give a few clear-desk quizzes so I can get true assessments of what they've retained, and so they don't get complacent about working between exams. But I think they'll be much better now about taking those class notes (I don't need to tell you other MTC teachers how frustrating it is to answer for the millionth time the question "You want us to write that?" when I project carefully worded and organized notes onto the whiteboard.)
The perpetual Pig-Pens with their clouds of candy wrappers, random worksheets, and Carmex tubes will not change either way. But now I don't have to touch their stuff.
