Making the perfect test is challenge, probably harder than planning or delivering the perfect lesson. When I thought I built a perfect test my first year, within minutes a student would point out, that a question was repeated, or there was some kind of repetition or some kind of obvious mistake. Sometimes the mistake would be so significant that I had to gather up the tests, make a correction and then redistribute them. I would have a laundry list of responses: “oh I put that question on there twice to see if you really know it…”, or “just leave that one blank…” or “yea I know there is a mistake on there, I wanted to see if you were reading the questions carefully…”. All my responses try to maintain whatever trust the students had in my ability to read and comprehend what and how I was testing them with.
My state tested biology classes, my assessments need to mimic the state test. Sad but true. It doesn’t take a Leonardo to write a test that mimics the state test, in order to get a vague idea how students will perform on the be-all-end-all test. The school district provides internet access to test building programs. (That being said the district has offered little professional development and support with using the test building programs). It does take a Leonardo to build assessment mechanisms that accurately track how much students know and have learned. The easiest correlation I have come up with so far, and as I teach more I will be able to discern wether or not my this correlation is true: what students know is directly related to their reading level. I don’t have extensive knowledge in the development of adolescent cognition and brain development, however, I have figured out that the lens you look out of is much different if you are reading at a 5th grade reading level, as opposed to a 9 or 10th grade reading level as a 15 year old. The pathways built within the brain when a child reads early, create ability for students to understand the abstract concepts of microbial life, cell division, or what the cell membrane consists of. Students who struggle to read can guess, fill in a bubble on a state test. With this in mind I have tried to understand biology differently, tried to alter my lens to better see what my students see. If the learning environment within the classroom is seen ecologically, as a living environment, each student plays an individual role, like individual organisms within an ecosystem, the interaction they provide within the class is unique. It’s mostly my job as the teacher to get them to interact within the environment. To get interactions I use white boards, entrance tickets, exit tickets, long and short answer questions on tests, requiring students to draw diagrams of biological processes, venn diagrams, cold calling students, even with the bellringer, I am able to gain some understanding of the extent of the students knowledge of biology by monitoring the room and watching what students dutifully fill out their answer sheet or gladly raise their hands to offer answers. Students receive homework twice a week--Monday, Wednesday, due on Friday. They turn in the homework in a homework folder where they keep a running log of what they turned in. Homework and the homework folder has been a great way for me to see at students ability to maintain organization, their ability to follow directions, and ability to complete a task independently This multidimensional approach to assessing students, and building assessments into instructional time gives a clear idea of how students are grasping the material.
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