Re-Post from C&I 407, Summer 2011:
While I try every
year to make changes to my assessments, I think that I need to work
harder at making sure that those assessments are kept in mind when
making teaching decisions. One of the things I plan to do is to
move faster into transitioning students from selection answers into
creation answers. For next year all of my social studies classes are
once again at the freshman level. I start tests off early in the
year with all selected response and gradually add in constructed
response level questions; short answer and then longer essay
questions. Over the years I have found that they get very little of
those in our junior high and I want to build them up to it.
I teach history and as a result need to find out how many historical
facts my students know, making selected response questions a good
choice (Popham, 2008, p 166). Over the years I have noticed
something that seems odd to me; some of my students do very poorly
on matching questions. I have students that won’t miss a single
multiple choice question, but will miss almost all of the matching
ones! One thing I will try to improve that is to work with them in
class on those types of question, giving them practice and tips.
Another thing that I might try for next year is to use pre-test and
post-test to help me measure the effectiveness of my teaching (pp
102-103).
As I attempt to move my students up Bloom’s Taxonomy
to application and synthesis (or to conditional knowledge in
Bruning et al.) I will work with them to improve their short answer
and essay questions. Doing so will take time, but if I have them
analyze sample responses to essay questions, I can hopefully show
them specifically why and answer is great or not so great.
As for my assessment types, I don’t think I will change them
radically, but as I mentioned, attempt to incorporate higher level
questions earlier. I will continue with my Universal Reading
Questions (URQs)
but I will make changes in how I use those to improve student
involvement in the classroom. I will attempt to involve the students
more in my responses to those questions. My goal with those
questions was to get them beyond “seek and find” questions that
often come at the end of a section or chapter, and to engage with
the text. I also get to find out the things that the students find
to be interesting and the things they don’t understand or want to
know more about.
In the future instead of me explaining the answer or background to
their questions, I will try to get them to look up that information
and guide them to the connections instead of simply pointing them
out. To be fair, they do make connections, but I would like for
them to make most of the connections. I plan to grade their
individual responses then group them by those with similar
responses or questions. Their follow up assignment will be a series
of questions concerning related facts and topics I will ask them
to look up to help them answer their own questions providing them
the opportunity to make deeper connections. I can still provide
additional information and connections as needed.
I always tell my students that history textbooks are boring because
they contain a lot of facts and very few of the really good
stories—don’t get me started on why that is, it would require another
blog page! I tell them that if they read and learn the basics I
will tell them the interesting human twists and possible
explanations that get left out. Now they will hopefully learn how
to go about finding out more about those things on their own with
additional guidance on my part.
Finally, I plan to limit my instructional objectives by combining
what Popham calls, “lesser, smaller-scope objectives,” (p. 104)
into curricular aims that will improve what I teach and how I
assess it. I want to avoid the super specific goals (like Illinois’
pages of social studies standards) in favor of ones that help the
students learn historical connections and support the English and
Language Arts goals of the Common Core Standards.
I hope that having these broader curricular aims will help guide
my instruction by helping me to focus on larger concepts and avoid
getting bogged down by the myriad of standards, or as Popham says,
“end up paying attention to no objectives at all (p. 103).
In today’s world a historical fact can be looked up in 0.05 seconds
(for 3,373,000 results!) My selected response tests will continue to
monitor their knowledge of the basic facts, but the URQs, essay
questions, connection essays and projects will address higher levels.
What I think is most important is that students can correctly
arrange those facts into related ideas, themes and connected
concepts that can help answer the questions of “who we are,” “where we
came from,” and “where we are going,” thus making the past capable
of being seen as relevant in the world, both today and tomorrow.
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