Written by Well, I’ve marked and returned Test #2 and they went pretty much the same as the first round. With reports and long weekends, we didn’t get time to go through the rubric, which means it will have to wait until Test #3.
I’ll share with you one item of reflection that I’ve been thinking about that came up on this test:
When I read through the first draft responses to my test for the enriched class, I worried that perhaps I had made a test that was just too hard. Perhaps I had pushed a little too much and expected them to solve some problems that they just weren’t ready for. When I gave them the feedback and time to revisit their solutions, they were silent and studious (in case you’re wondering, 21 grade 9 boys who get worked up about puzzles aren’t silent, like ever).
And then I read through the final copies. They had obviously been thinking about the problems since the first draft. They had been presented with a problem that they didn’t know how to solve and they kept looking for answers. They had been talking to their classmates and looking for strategies to solve. They had learned something FROM a test? I think that’s pretty darn cool. Bad news (good news?) for them is that I’m going to keep making the tests hard and seeing what they can do!
In the hopes that the answers I’m looking for are simple rather than complex, here is an example of three approaches to the same problem. One student used a traditionally algebraic approach to construct the equations of two lines and the solution took almost a whole board. A few other students looked for patterns and without the bias of looking for a y=mx+b style approach, solved it in a couple of lines. So hopefully some outside perspective will make it all come into focus for me!
My problem is this: I want to have a variety of assessment methods in my class and I’m so stuck on tests. I’m seeing them present every class and I can tell you a lot about what they know, but I don’t know how to translate that into a grade that’s meaningful and also doesn’t take away their willingness to take risks when they’re sharing a problem.
We’ve been doing some formative assessment (exit tickets on basic knowledge), which we’re going to start tracking and we’re giving out a data management project this week as well, but it just feels like we so often default to testing. At least with the two drafts, I feel like I’m hammering down a little closer to what they may actually know, but there’s still so many problems with relying on tests. And don’t get me started on marks in general because I would love to just ditch them completely, but I want to find a way to work a little better within the system as it exists.
Any ideas?