Assessment is an important tool in the classroom; make sure your evaluation is accurate. These tips will help improve the usefulness of your tests and quizzes.
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- Do try to include questions of a higher cognitive level. Items merely memorized tend to be forgotten as soon as the test is over.
- Provide adequate notice and help in preparing your students for examinations.
- Let students review in study teams before an exam.
- Set up a self-checking station for students to grade their own multiple-choice quizzes and homework assignments. Have a laminated answer key and colored marking pens available. Students are not allowed to bring their own pens or pencils to the checking station and only one student at a time is allowed at the station. When done, the corrected work is left in a tray at the station. As you record grades, spot check the work for accuracy and honesty. Research shows students are generally quite accurate in their self-scoring.
- Keep a copy of evaluation sheets when you rate the student's essay or product. Keep one and return the other to the student to keep.
- Experiment with giving collaborative tests. Groups of three students get to work together on the test. You might randomly assign groups each time or carefully select a stratified sample so one high- and one low-ability student get included in each group. To succeed, a cooperative climate must already be established in your room.
- Give some attention to reducing test anxiety among your students. One tactic for reducing test anxiety and helping students prepare for an examination is to permit them to ask any question about the test that may be answered "yes" or "no." (Contributed by Barb Wagner.)
- Immediately before an examination lead the class in some relaxation exercises: focused breathing, positive affirmations, stretching, perhaps even shoulder rubs.
- Provide adequate feedback on students' test performance. Help them understand where they erred and to correct mistakes and misunderstandings. Any assessment should help a student learn.
- Some teachers use cooperative learning groups to take weekly quizzes together and then individual final examinations. The cooperative group may then meet after the examinations are scored to help each other understand questions missed.
- If any students are very upset about their exam scores, offer to meet with them the next day. Give them some time to cool off first. Make it a policy to never argue with a student about a grade in front of the class. Nobody wins, and the results usually will only be unpleasant.
- If a large number of students do poorly on an exam, reconsider its worth. While it is tempting to blame large numbers of failures upon incompetent, apathetic students, sometimes it is the instruction or assessment that was defective. Try to remain objective.
Excerpted from Classroom Teacher's Survival Guide.
