#8
This week we spent much of our time talking about assessment. One thing I remember from high school is test anxiety. It was a problem for me that I know affected my grades. I hope I can make tests that do not create undue stress for my students. I plan to be sure to leave a lot of white space. This is not something I have ever thought about before, but it makes sense. I always pay very close attention to formatting, so keeping the columns in line and the test sheet organized should not be a problem.
Another thing I remember from high school is that a number of teachers thought it was fun to try to trick us with their test questions. I never understood the point of this. When I give an objective assessment, I plan to ask straight forward questions with straight forward answers. No curveballs.
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Yes, Ben. It’s important to treat tests in a straightfoward way. Of course, we as teachers want our students to do well. If we prepare them well in advance and align our instruction to the assessments, then the students should do well. We want to give the students opportunties to work with the information before the exam.
If students don’t do well on an exam, then we teachers need to make some decisions. Do we spend time reteaching the information, or do we move forward with our curriculum? There are dangers with both. If we reteach the information, then we lose precious time and have to give up some of our curriculum. If we move forward, then we have students who are lost. Tough decisions.
No matter what your decision, be sure to spend time going over the test and the correct answers. At a minimum, we need to do this. Nice comments, Ben! NB