Offering only multiple choice
questions prevents the students from thinking outside of the box. The questions
are straight forward and they only have to decide between four choices. These choices are usually also straight
forward and many of the students only remember the information for these tests
long enough to pass. Once they have
taken their test and passed they often forget the information altogether.
When I was in
High School I had some teachers that offered only multiple choice tests and
other teachers that gave us open-ended and fill in the blank exams. The tests that I took that involved having to
learn the information and understand what it meant were the open ended tests and
not the multiple choice tests. The information in the open-ended tests was the
information that I still remembered the answers to at the end of the year. When I entered college I was forced to learn
and understand the material that I was going to be tested over. That was in a
large part because I was tested using essay questions and not only multiple
choice questions.
Overall I
believe that when students are given only multiple choice questions and are not
required to use their critical thinking skills they are less likely to learn
the information. Students need to be
pushed and forced to use their critical thinking skill so that they can also
improve their problem solving skills. My
biggest fear about not helping students develop critical thinking skills is
that it will lead the students further into their learned helplessness and
prevent them from succeeding when they are older.
i)
Two examples of formative
assessments that I am using now are group activities, including labs, as well
as participation grades, the latest being a card sort requiring the students to
match cell organelles to their picture and function.
ii)
Currently I am using chapter
tests to assess students summative as well as worksheets that involve the
students using any knowledge of the information to answer them.
iii)
It is important to have a combination
of the two so that students are being assessed on various levels. Some students
have test anxiety or just are not able to perform well on tests for a number of
reasons. If students were only being
graded based on test performance many of them would fail. However when other types of assessments are
given such as group discussion students are able to display their knowledge of
the subject to the teacher as well as their peers. Being in a classroom setting where there are
several MOD students I have been able to see that those students that fail a
test are not failing because they are unfamiliar with the information covered
in the exam but because they simply do not test well. Giving students various outlets to display
their knowledge proves not only to the teacher but to the students themselves
that they are competent and that they can master the information.
iv)
List three kinds of assessments:
1.
I would like to incorporate an
exit slip (formative assessment) into the end of the class period and have the
students place them in an organizer hanging on the door or near the door of the
classroom. They students will have a
certain pocket they put their exit slip into so that I can collect them easily
and so that they will already be in alphabetical order.
2.
I would also like to have class
projects (summative) where each student has a responsibility for the project
and the class completes them together. I
would give them the prompt and allow the students to delegate a leader and
divide the components for the project so that each student within the class has
one job to do to help complete the project.
I would like to do this once in the fall and once in the spring so that
students will learn responsibilities and how to work as a team. I would allow a select amount of time
throughout the weeks to allow the students to talk about their progress and put
the project together. The students might
even be divided up into smaller groups so that each group could take care of
one part.
3.
I would like to do multiple
group act ivies (formative) in the lab so that the students are able to perform
hands-on activities to supplement their learning. At the end of select units the class would
enter the lab and complete an activity top demonstrate what they just learned. Such as when the students finish learning
about how plants absorb water the students would complete a lab in which they
would place white carnations into various colors of water and hypothesize what
will happen to the flower.
