FIAE+Chapter+6+Block+1

Abstract The focus, of course, is on the on the pragmatics of variety in test questions. One could view it from a scientific viewpoint. Scientists always are on the lookout for anything that could compromise the results of their experiments. So, they try to test only one variable at a time in each experiment, while also doing as many different experiments as possible to test and retest the phenomena they are observing. This is an excellent metaphor for tests. We are trying to both remove the compromising variables in our test questions and do a variety of tests to see a phenomenon from different angles. One way to structure the differentiation of your test is organize it Bloom’s Taxonomy: While tests cover the “linguistic” field of the Multiple Intelligences, within that field are sub-categories, as shown here: [|http://www.indiana.edu/~best/write_better_tests.shtml]. You might imagine your test questions being put into the various levels of the Blooms Pyramid. Compromising variables that people mentioned included double negatives (meaning ones that equal out to positives), convoluted and overlong sentences, and dubious interpretation of texts that’s already been done. Even the basic layouts of a test need to taken into account. Matching items should be on the same page, as flipping pages can be incredibly irritating as the clock ticks away. http://www.nwlink.com/~donclark/hrd/bloom.html Synthesis What everyone had in common when talking about this chapter the discussion of their own experiences with tests and some of the rather ridiculous conventions so cherished by test takers, such as the narrowness of the test questions, their obnoxious length, absurd double negatives, and the limited time provided to complete them. In general, everyone agreed that tests have some value as instruments of assessment as long as we recognize their limitations, as all forms of assessment have limitations.

By Ethan Guthrie Herrell

Alex Randall
FIAE Chapter 6 Creating effective test questions is a great way to make your students think, but to also help you think about how effective your testing can be. The point of tests is primarily to score your students knowledge and understanding of the subject matter, but it is also a good way to see how they are doing and how they are handling your work loads and topics. And if you use a variety of questions and prompts, you can address several different intelligences along the way. If you have a test that is all essay questions, someone that is terrible with essay questions is going to break under the pressure. But if you have nothing but multiple choice questions on a test, it probably will not be that accurate. Keeping a test varied can greatly impact the results of the test scores. Keeping questions short and clear (and without using annoying double-negatives) can also help the process. Then again, the longer and more complex the questions, the better chances you have of seeing how certain students handle reading comprehension, but that's probably something to use on assessments. But, most importantly, it is good to ask questions that assess what you want to (or need to) assess. What is the point of taking a test to be graded if you, the teacher, are not learning from it too?

Ethan Guthrie Herrell
Fair Isn’t Always Equal: Chapter 6.

In recognition that everything has a time and a place (well, maybe not //everything//), this chapter is about how to create effective test questions, which involve using the old-standbys of multiple choice, matching, fill in the blank with forms favored by more modern approaches to education: open-ended questions, diagrams, inventing analogies and what-not. Avoid double negatives and those “all except A and B”, which do not actually test kids on the subject at hand (unless the subject is reading). More than that, a little humor of the outrageous kind never hurts, and is a good antidote to the extreme seriousness we commonly see involved with testing nowadays (NCLB…cough…cough). Always make sure that the types of formats you used are very familiar to the students and have been practiced over and over again, so that confusion over method doesn’t obscure knowledge of content.

Small tests that are given across time give more accurate readings. Students may do poorly on a test because they stayed up late the night before, come to school pissed-off for one reason or a another, or simply because of fluke. Just as drawn out tournaments sort out the stronger teams by lowering chance as a factor, so don’t multiple, small tests.

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Sam Leal
Chapter 6: Creating Good Test Questions

Chapter 6 in FIAE discusses test questions and what makes a question bad, and what makes a question good. The chapter does a very good job in showing how students really do have many approaches when they face a question. A test question is suppose to be a way to assess the students understanding of the subject, not something that’s suppose to try and trick them into maybe choosing the wrong answer. Also sometime bad questions waste students’ time thinking about the tricks behind them and then they end up not finishing the test. That’s what’s most important to me about the chapter, to make you think like a student and put though into making good test questions. The chapter highlights the importance of using different question types. This is very important I believe, it gives the students different ways to show their understanding of the material. Maybe some students are better or worse at different types of test questions and this is a way to help provide some balance. Another tip which is a good one for me because I’m a very slow test taker is for the teacher to make questions efficient, by providing for example the word true or false and allow the student to just circle the appropriate answer. All in all this is a very important part of teaching, making tests will be an every day/week assignment. I learned, be concise, keep the student in mind, have focus and reason for it, and lastly to make them easier for myself to grade.

Cidney
In order to create effective tests, a variety of traditional and non-traditional questions and prompts should be used. Mixing forced choice (e.g. multiple choice) and constructed response questions allow for the instructor to get a better picture of the student’s mastery of material. Not only should questions be varied, but test taking should be efficient so that students do not become bogged down by details or tire during test-taking. If a student is tired or stressed by unclear directions, the teacher will get less accurate results because of these performance-based stressors. Some suggestions for making tests efficient are providing T’s and F’s for students to circle in true/false questions, matching items should be kept on the same page, and key words that appear in directions should be emphasized by bold font or highlights. Avoiding confusing negative and making directions and prompts clear will also allow students to focus on the test and demonstrating their mastery rather than become worried by unclear directions.

All of the information in chapter 6 is relevant and good advice for creating assessments in my classroom. I understand the importance of keeping the test simple and clear for students, because they will perform better and more accurately demonstrate their level of mastery. Using smaller tests over time, as opposed to a large culminating assessment, will allow for me to get a clear picture of the students’ performance and level of mastery and enable me to see if the material being covered is sinking in.

Colby Hill
FIAE Chapter 6 I think test questions were something teachers sometimes took for granted at my high school. How something is worded and the grammar involved can make all the difference in a sentence. For example: “let’s eat dad” and “let’s eat, dad” are too much difference sentences due to a punctuation mark. These considerations should go into a test paper as well. A student who reads a question wrong can get the right answer to a wrong question which means the answer is technically wrong for the test’s sake. I will definitely use a variety of questions and prompts, as discussed on page 75, but I will also make sure questions actually make sense. Surely there will always be some confusion, but why add to it if it’s simply proof-reading that can prevent it. “This isn’t making it easier; it’s making sure the student reveals what he or she knows” (77). The segment on page 78 about avoiding confusing negatives was actually surprising for me. I’ve never thought of that before, but negatives do, in fact, confuse the hell out of people—myself included. I definitely like the idea of including common errors and mistakes as possible answers to questions. The student should have fair warning, though, because it is tricky. This goes back to the idea of making it easier versus showing us what a student knows: if a student disregards common wrong answers and comes out with the right answers, it just shows that the student really is learning their material. And it really never hurts to put fun into anything, test questions included.

Jordan Hale
When creating good test questions, it is important to consider many things. Mainly, teachers need to make sure that the format of the questions doesn’t interfere with the students correct showing of mastery. Things like confusing negatives, confusing word choice and the questions that only the teacher knows the answer to make the student ignore what they know and try and figure out what the question is even asking. Student readiness should help tailor the tests and quizzes. Students who are rushed through material just to fill the requirements hardly learn the material long-term. Each assessment should fit the student’s needs. If teachers force students to learn, the student may lack motivation and effort. Lastly, teachers need to return the corrected material in a timely manner to students have time to reflect on pieces of the lesson they may still be missing. When making my own test and quizzes in the future, it would help my students to connect the questions to them. For instance, if the unit is discovering the area of a rectangle, I could say that “Paul’s house measure 40x15x20 feet. He and Andy are combining houses. What is the total both houses if Andy’s house measures 32x14x19 feet?” Andy and Paul are fictional students in my future classroom. It relaxes students so hopefully they will perform better. I always liked to, as a student, leave a little comment for the teacher to have a laugh at since they did the same for us on questions like this!

Elizabeth Sargent
Creating good test questions is not really something I have ever had to think about, but after reading this chapter on it I find myself wondering how much thought my past teachers put into my quizzes and tests. While there are many different types of assessment out there, making sure that your assessments are fair and show mastery is key to your success.

There were many effective methods in this chapter that would help make assessments fair, easier to grade, and harder to cheat. Having a double record of test responses is a great idea. Not only do students have their own copy, but also are able to grade their own copy and get immediate feedback on how then did instead of waiting for the teacher to grade it. Making sure that tests are not worded too complicated is another asset to a teacher’s repertoire. Not only do confusing questions make students feel worried, they also don’t show students mastery. The students were not prompted on logical thinking, and so the questions should not be iterated that way. But as teachers, we have to make sure that questions are not too easy or give away the answer. Having grammar clues in questions helps students to figure out the answer without content knowledge but just grammar knowledge. Mainly, I learned that keeping tests short, to the point, untimed when appropriate, and fun questions are the way to go. As a student and an upcoming teacher I have always believed that humor is necessary for any classroom. It creates a positive atmosphere, but also a relaxed one.

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Emily Haskell
Chapter 6: Creating Good Test Questions

In this chapter I also agree with the author in that there should be a variety of questions, both formal and informal. In high school all of the tests I took were multiple choice, true/false, and possibly a few short answer or essay questions. Even today we see this kind of thing on exams. Last year I took a class where our entire grade was based on two exams consisting of 50 multiple-choice questions.

I think that as a teacher I really want to give a student the opportunity to not only experiment with different kinds of learning, but to use the style that best suits them. What we are learning in all of our education classes, and even in some of those that are not education based, is that everyone is different. We function differently, we learn differently, and we teach differently. So why then as future teachers would we not allow our students to learn using their strengths.

Another thing that I strongly agree with is this idea of making test taking more efficient and accessible to students. Some of the tests I have taken seem to consume twice as much time as they really needed to. To me it seems as though making a test more efficient for students in turn makes it simpler for the teacher to grade. As a future teacher, this in itself seems like the best reason in the world to take a few extra minutes to perfect a test, rather than wasting an hour doing extra grading and trying to figure out what kids have written down.

Karina Sprague
There were three main suggestions in this chapter; make tests efficient, mix things up, and make tests accurate.

At first, I thought that making tests efficient meant making them easier. After reading this chapter, I found that is not the case. Making tests efficient help students stay focused and less stressed. If you have short answer questions or true/false questions, the students will look at it and feel a sense of relief because it looks short. By making tests in an efficient way, you can still get a good idea of the students’ understanding while making it easier on them.

The second suggestion was to mix things up. I find this to be common sense, mostly because all of my tests in high school and middle school were mixed up. We usually had a fill in the blank section, a multiple choice section, a true or false section, and a short answer section or an essay. I always liked these tests because you can flip through and do the less time consuming parts first. Then, when you get to the long parts, you have a sense of confidence because you have already finished 90% of the test. I think that in my classes, I will give tests like this. I will always have a short answer section or an essay section on my tests because I want students to be able to showcase what they know. This can be hard to do with multiple choice questions.

Lastly, it is very important to have good grammar when writing a test. Grammar can make or break a question. Students all read and interpret differently, so if your grammar does not ask exactly what you want to ask, you will end up with a lot of answers that you did not want.

Spencer Hodge
Chapter six gives insight on creating effective tests. Test taking can be a great way to evaluate each student’s progress. For many students however, test taking does not come easy. Creating and designing a test which will satisfy not only the needs of the teacher but the needs of the student as well, can be a huge challenge. Generally, the issues aren't from the materials on the test but rather from the set-up or form of the test. The goal of creating any test should not be to trick the student into getting the answer wrong, or wording a question so that the student thinks about it, and spends more time reading the question than actually answering it. Knowing how your students learn will help in forming a test tailored to their abilities. Abstract thinkers might like to have tests that give multiple options for the essay portion, or simply multiple choice questions. Concrete thinkers on the other hand may prefer just a single essay prompt to follow or short answers. Again, if the teacher knows each student is different in the way they learn, they will know each student is different in the way they test.

What I took as the main message of the chapter is to simply do not make confusing, and unnecessary tests. Personally, one thing that I want to practice as a teacher is humor, perhaps even in the testing environment. Using humor to loosen up a test environment or even on a test itself can be helpful if it is subtle enough that it does not cause distraction.