I gave my first test two weeks ago. Oh boy, was that fun.
Phase 1: Preparation
Of course my test would be fair but
challenging. It would be multiple choice
so that it would be easy to grade. I
would give my test to 11th during their double period so I could
divide the class of 90+ in two groups and limit students 2 to a desk. We don’t get free copies from the school so my
options are writing the test on the board for the kids to copy onto their own
paper, collecting money from the students to make copies, or to just suck up
the cost of the test myself.
I wanted to cover as much material
as possible on my test so asking the students to waste most of their test time
copying the test down onto their own paper is out of the question. At 2.5Mets a page, it wouldn’t be
unreasonable to request that the students pay for their own 1-2 page test,
afterall that’s what most of the other teachers request. Then I’m reminded that chemistry is one of 9
subjects that my students buy tests for.
On top of that teachers aren’t above charging students for a 5 page test
when the test is only 1 page while another would demand their students pay for
a 10 page info packet. I’ve already
asked my students to supply their own copy of the periodic table and to buy two
notebooks for my class. That leaves me
to buy all the copies for 300 students.
I could easily spend 1000Met out of my 7000Met monthly allowance on
those tests.
It took forever but I finally
produced two versions of a multiple choice test that fit on half a page. I even wrote a third version to go over as a
review before the test and teach the students how to answer my questions.
Phase 2: The
Mission
My 11th grade test during
1st and 2nd period was a mess. I made all of the kids put their stuff at the
front of the class and told them to only take out a pen. Of course I still had to kick out four or
five students for trying to use their notebooks under their desks. I didn’t even bother kicking people out for
talking. I would have kicked out the
whole class. I told them up front that there were different versions of the
test and that they would probably have different questions than their neighbor.
I still got questions like “Teacher, there is a mistake. I don’t have the same choices for question 3
as my friend.” Time after time, I say, “No
mistake. Look at your own test.”
They really just have no concept why teachers give tests in the first place. School is all about getting good grades. You're not actually supposed to learn anything.
My original plan for 11th
grade was to split the class into two equal groups and give the test to one
group during the first half of class and then again to the second group during
the second half to minimize crowding. It
turns out that this is hard to do when you don’t actually know how many
students to expect. I had a full
classroom for the first period and 4 students second period.
My 12th grade tests went
a little better. I made them all get up
and then I sat them down one by one.
This worked out great for two reasons: 1) I achieved the maximum space
between students 2) Sudents who wanted to sit near each other were separated
and students who wanted to sit in the back were seated in the front. The bonus benefit of surprising my students
with random seating was cheaters were no longer seated near their hidden
notebooks! The students were much more
willing to admit there was a notebook under their desk when it wasn’t their own.
I did have one good moment in my
last test for 11th grade. My
students finished their test very quickly and with almost 15 minutes still left
in class, all but one student had left.
The last girl watched the second to last student leave, looked down at
her test, then looked at me, and started to get up.
“You have until the end of class,
you know. Take as much time as you need.”
She looked so surprised that I was
willing to stay just for her but she sat back down and ten minutes later handed
in her test. I was glad to show her
teachers should care but unfortunately I don’t think the extra time helped her…
Phase 3: Debrief
I knew that I was going to have a
high fail rate so 50 pass/50 fail for 12th grade and about 70
pass/30 fail for 11th grade. All
and all, not bad. It was really funny to
see the rediculously wrong answers students had selected because they had
copied someone with the other version of the test.
The hardest part by far of the whole
testing experience was handing back the exams.
I learned the hard way that I need to circle all of their answers in my
own pen and fill in all of the questions they left blank. As soon as I handed back the test, my desk was
swarmed by students with claims of errors in their grade.
“Teacher, I put the same answer as
so-and-so and you marked it wrong.”
“That’s because you had different
tests. Your answer to your question is
wrong.”
“But Teacher”
“No.”
“Teacher, you forgot to add points
for this question.”
“That’s because when I graded the
test yesterday, you hadn’t answered the question.”
“But Teacherrrrr”
“No.”
“Teacher, you marked this question
wrong.”
“That’s because you marked two
answers.
“But TEEAAACHHHHERRR”
“EVERYONE SIT DOWN. I’m not changing any grades. I’m going home.”
Sounds very similar to my test-giving experience... I haven't handed them back yet, so.... we'll see how that goes. O.o
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