FIAE+B2+Chapter+6

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Abstract - Jen R[[image:FIAE_6.jpg width="800" height="517"]]
Chapter six of //Fair Isn’t Always Equal// by Rick Wormeli primarily focused on [|designing good test questions]. It is vey important that in order to assess our students fairly, we create good test questions. Throughout the chapter, Wormeli introduced a number of ideas on making tests more efficient. A few ideas given includes using a variety of questions, avoiding confusing questions, making prompts clear, keeping tests short, and making questions authentic. Wormeli guides you through the proper stages of developing productive test questions. He also gave suggestions such as using smaller tests more frequently rather than one big exam. With true or false questions, Wormeli suggest avoiding a pattern, because then students become focused on the sequence of letters and they misread the questions. With matching questions, you want to be very straightforward and avoid tricky definitions or multiple possible answers.

Synthesis - Jen R.
For the most part, everybody developed the same understanding from this chapter. We all agreed that is very important for the success of our students that we create the most efficient test possible. Another common theme throughout the class posts was avoiding any questions that may trick or stall our students while taking an exam. Most everybody addressed the connection between [|proper assessment] and efficient testing. In addition to efficient testing, we all understood the importance of constructing our exams with the idea of immediate feedback in mind. As a class, we all seem very excited for the opportunity to construct our own test.

Tiarra
In order to create good test questions, one must be able to use a variety of traditional and non-traditional prompts and formats. Traditional questions include things that we’ve all seen at one time or another such as multiple-choice, matching, true-false, fill in the blank, essay etc… Not so traditional methods include performances, drawings, analogies and critiques. It is also important to use a combination of “forced choice” and “constructed response” questions. Forced choice questions give students part of the information and require them to chose the answer, while constructed response involve asking the student to generate the information on their own. One thing I really liked from this chapter was the quotation, “The less students have to guess the more they can achieve” (78). When students have to guess the answer to a test they are not proving that they have learned the material and test results become meaningless. It is important that teachers make prompts clear and use tests as a means to an end in which authentic questions are used to assess students on what you want to assess them on. = =

Danny K.
Chapter six covered creating good test questions. The author suggests using a variety of test questions/prompts, which include traditional and not-so-traditional questions/prompts. The not-so-traditional type of test questions really jumped out at me because I had never thought of them as being test type questions. Some of the not-so-traditional items that I hadn’t thought about before included analogies, exclusion brainstorming, and deciphering content clues that, when put together, reveals a conclusion. I will take some of these not-so-traditional types of questions into considerations when I am making up tests during my teaching career. I also liked the double recording of test responses idea because I hated having to wait days before getting to know the results of the test I just took. This way students are able to get immediate feedback on how they have preformed.

Will L.
In chapter six, it discusses the ways to develop test questions. The various types that everyone knows are matching, fill in the blank, and true/false. It is important to use variety in the tests so students don’t feel too bored when taking and so they feel relatively stimulated when taking the test. The chapter’s discussion seemed rather simple, but every level of education has tests. It’s important to have tests because students need to be prepared for any given class that may feature testing. I think tests are an okay part of education, but not if they are overdone. Different content areas require more or less testing, but I believe my concentration has a fair amount of testing that should be implemented.

Grace K.
Chapter 6 addresses what many of us immediately think of when we think of assessment: tests. The chapter ran step by step through many testing strategies and argued for or against particular ones. In general, the main idea when creating test questions is to be clear and fair; the test isn’t the appropriate place to throw students a curve ball just to see how they’ll handle it. To this end, Wormeli recommends avoiding trick questions, avoiding negatives (like “all of the above except C and E”) or confusing phrasing, only using as many questions about one topic as is truly necessary to assess mastery, and avoiding timed tests. He also recommended highlighting key words to ensure students understand the question fully, mixing in traditional and nontraditional questions, and making the test as efficient as possible. I found it surprising that one of Wormeli’s suggestions was to include common mistakes as options on multiple choice questions. With the majority of this chapter focusing on the fact that tricking students in one way or another is unfair on a test, I found this suggestion out of place. True, it isn’t tricking a student if they know the information, but when the goal, as defined by the author, is to avoid students being so unsure of themselves that they start to guess answers, I thought this was an out-of-place addition.

Justin C.
This chapter talks about different ways of testing student’s knowledge of a content area. The chapter is broken down into multiple sections based on many different types of questions. One section that stuck out to me was using a double record of test answers. It talks about having students keep one copy of answers and the other will be turned in. Students are given the ability to have a teacher go over answers in the same testing period to offer students quick feedback. They could remember what they had answered and can see what they may have done wrong. It also suggests giving students copies of the tests so that they can redo problems to see if they can come to the correct answer. My professors here at UMF in the math department all have had websites where they post old tests in order redo them to see if they could come to the appropriate response. This has always helped me to see where I had gone wrong and to where I need to make changes in my methodology to see where I went wrong and what I should have actually been doing.

Dan B.
Chapter six talked about making god test questions. One thing that they really stressed in the chapter, that I agree completely with, was the need to make test questions clear to students. Teachers need to stay away from multiple choice questions because there are often two choices that could be right; multiple choice questions do not really test a students knowledge either because the student could guess and still get the answer correct. You also want to make sure writing prompts are clear. For example, instead of saying "Discuss the Civil War." you could say "Discuss the main causes of the Civil War, and talk about the advantages that each side had that influenced the outcome of the war." The latter of these really makes the students think about what they learned, whereas the first prompt is not really clear and the student may not know how to begin to answer it. Another suggestion that I liked was when it said to put this question on your test: "Name a question that you thought would be on this test but wasn't. Now answer that question." I think that this is also a good way to test a students knowledge and understanding on a subject; and because the student is picking their topic they will be interested in it and want to write about it. The idea is to make the questions clear, and to make sure that the student has really understood the material.

Grady B.
After taking countless 100-question, multiple-choice tests, I was initially surprised, and then delighted by the author’s immediate dismissal of test questions that aim to “trip up” a student. I have taken so many tests with questions that seemed to be based on the arbitrary whims of a teacher (or professor), that I had lost sight of the fact that this is not how it should be. The section on double recording test responses was also interesting to me, as a student that has waited weeks for the return of a test. In general, I found a large majority of the ideas put forth in this chapter to be not only great ideas, but contradictory to what common practice is in the profession. That being said, pointers such as ensuring that test methods mirror instruction methods, keeping similar test questions to a minimum, and incorporating some personalization and fun into test questions, will surely prove invaluable in breaking the mold in testing methods. In the end, a good teacher has to ensure that their test do more than just call for the regurgitation of information, but the active application of material in effective ways.

Tyler S
Tests are meant not to be a big part of your grade, but to assess your level of understanding. A lot of teachers seem to have fun coming up with trick questions, or have multiple answers in which you have to determine which is more correct. In both cases, I am not sure whether they do it on purpose or if the whole “which is more correct” idea is just an excuse for them not realizing they put in two answers that are both correct.

Chris D.
Chapter 6 talks about how to create good quiz and test questions. From the first sentence, it was made clear that multiple choice questions weren’t any good as they don’t test the knowledge of what the students know about the material, but rather “they assess the extent to which students can guess what’s on the teacher’s mind” (75). In a math class, multiple choice questions don’t even have a place because it doesn’t show that the student has mastered the skills that are required to arrive at the right answer. There should also be a mix of traditional and non-traditional questions on an assessment. Traditional questions include matching, true/false, and short essay. Non-traditional include drawings, diagrams, and analyzing real-life applications. Highlighting important words or numbers is a good thing to do when creating tests. This way the students will know what is being asked of them and they focus on that part and stay on track. This could also lead to eliminating ambiguous responses to what you’re asking. Including common errors is actually considered to be a good thing when creating tests. I wouldn’t agree with this inclusion because a student can overlook or misread a key word, like mass vs. weight, get that problem wrong and still know the difference between the two. It almost seems like playing mind games with students, and in my opinion it isn’t fair. I can also see myself giving my students a fun question to lighten the mood. In a test atmosphere, my students are going to be panicking and so giving them a question that either includes their name in some silly way or an outlandish problem that has a pun or two in it will lighten the mood, and nothing is better than a little humor.

Kaitlin T.
Wormeli explains the importance of designing appropriate and fair tests. There is no need to evaluate a student over all the material of a unit at once. Why not take the time to assess students over time by the aid of small, less daunting quizzes and/or tests? Also, it’s important to educate and test in the same manner. Through reading this chapter I was introduced to “double recording.” When students are able to double-record their test answer, they are able to get an almost immediate assessment following the completion of the test. I’m pretty wild about this concept! As an English concentration, I think using double recording would be appropriate for vocabulary quizzes. Teachers need to think entirely of their students when creating a test. It’s not about which questions will be easiest for me to correct as it is about which question are most effective to present my students’ learning.

Jonathan B.
Everyone can relate to the topic at hand in Chapter 6. I've had so many teachers who wrote test questions that were tricky or otherwise non-straightforward. There is a problem if a student who fully understands the material is having trouble on a test because it is written in an confusing manner. Avoiding “confusing double negatives” can help to negate this problem. The chapter includes a number of simple yet crucial components of test-making. For one, making the test efficient is paramount. Students only have so much time to complete a test, and they shouldn't be spending that time formatting their answers (unless the nature of the test/question calls for that). The time taking a test should be devoted, as much as possible, to mental calculation, response, recollection, and application to test questions. Including some fun or humor into the test is something I always enjoyed, and the nature of my personality would make me include that in the test anyway. Nonetheless, it helps to improve the students' disposition toward the test, which can improve performance. I will take these tips into consideration when creating my tests, especially when working with multiple choice/TF questions and answer patterns. = =

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Jen R.
Chapter six primarily focuses on how to create good test questions. Throughout this chapter, Wormeli guides you through the proper stages of developing productive test questions. Coming from a student’s perspective, this is a very intriguing concept. Throughout grade/high school, I was always curious as to how teachers came up with test questions. I found myself surprisingly pleased with the material covered on the test, or confused with the structure and content. Chapter six taught me how to create good clear test questions that do not confuse the students. I learned that the best test are those that use a variety of different style questions such as: true/false, short answer, drawing, diagrams, matching and etc.