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• Elona Hartjes, MEd (Candidate), Ontario Certified Teacher

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I want my students to reflect on how well or how poorly they prepared for tests. I want my students to think about being better prepared for their next test. Often, they don’t prepare at all beyond the review for the test I do in class. I see this happening all the time. I think my students may intend to prepare for the test, but when they leave my classroom they leave their intentions behind. I’m hoping the test reflection handout I have them complete will encourage them to remember to prepare for the next test. I’m thinking that maybe after completing a half dozen or so of these reflections, the idea of preparing for the next test will stick in their mind. Now that I’m telling you about my plan, I think I might even have them reflect on their quiz preparation as well. Then the idea of preparing should be deeply embedded in their minds and they will remember to prepare. Here’s a copy of the reflection handout.

I have tried to use kid friendly language, you can change it to suit your purposes. Also, this reflection was about a math test ; you can change it to suit your purposes.

Test Reflection Sheet

Name: ________________________________  Date:______________________

How do you feel about your performance on this test? (circle one)

Awesome!!                   Cool                        Lame                                       Get Real

Do you think  you demonstrated what you knew about the topic on this test? Why? Why not?

How much time did you spend studying for this test? I spent about Days ____            Hours ____       Minutes____ studying for this test.

How much of the assigned work did you complete on this topic? All____     Almost all_____  Some_______   Little_______

What would you do differently preparing for the next test?  Why? What would you do the same? Why?

OK., I don’t get it. Why did Kim choose to do the three paragraph essay to demonstrate her HOTS?

Kim, not her real name, has a learning disability that makes it difficult for her to get her thoughts down on paper.  Her oral contributions in class are always very insightful and demonstrate superior critical thinking skills, yet  her written output demonstrates non of this.  When I talked to her about the discrepancy between her oral and written work she simply said “That’s how I am.  I don’t do details”.

I’ve been encouraging Kim to use graphic organizers that will let her tease out her thoughts on paper, well actually onto the computer monitor,  and build them from single words into phrases, then into sentences and paragraphs and finally into an essay.  Let’ s just say that were still working on that.

Keeping Kim’s strengths in mind and the strengths of the other students in the class, I decided to differentiate the next summative evaluation by inviting my students  to choose  to demonstrate their HOTS on the topic  by

• writing a three paragraph essay

or

• creating a comic strip

or

• writing a poem

or

• writing a song

or

• giving a 3 minute oral report

or

• creating a 5 minute radio script about the topic  with a partner

I had the rubrics for each of the activities available for the students to see to help them decide which one of the activities they wanted to do.

When I asked Kim what she had chosen to do for the summative , she  told me she was going to do  the three paragraph essay. I was surprised, to say the least.  When I asked her why she chose to write the essay  instead of  using her oral skills, she just shrugged her shoulders and told me she thought it was easier to do the essay than anything else.  I don’t get it.  She knows I won’t accept an essay that doesn’t meet the standards set out in the rubric  for the essay.  It will be interesting.

Oh bye the way, other students are busy writing poems and songs, creating  comic strips and  a radio scripts and enjoying themselves immensely.  The classroom was filled with that wonderful laughter that tells you learning is fun.

photo from here

“I don’t remember going to the Internet and downloading the essay”

“It wasn’t me. It was my sister. She probably did it.”

” It wasn’t me. It was my brother. He helped me with my essay.”

“I used dictionary.com and found some synonyms so some of the words are different. It’s not exactly the same.”

These are some of the excuses I got recently when I caught some of my grade nine students handing in essays they didn’t write. The irony of all of this is if these students could craft fine essays like the ones they handed in, they wouldn’t be in my class. My class is for students who struggle with writing essays. The minute I see one that is finely crafted like these were, I’m suspicious.

I try to prevent this kind of thing happening by having my students show me their entire writing process from start to finish. I tell them that writing an essay is a process and they have to show me the process.  The process involves

• brainstorming
• using  a 5 paragraph graphic organizer to organize their thought before putting them to paper
• having a peer edit the first draft of the essay and have the editor sign acknowledging this
• making corrections to first draft
• having another peer edit the second draft of the essay and have the second editor sign acknowledging this
• making corrections to the second draft
• submitting  the final draft

None of the students who plagiarized could show me the entire writing process.  The fact that the students weren’t  able to show me the entire writing process would have tipped me off as well if the plagiarism hadn’t been as obvious as it was.

Here’s an excellent link about plagiarism that students find engaging.

This link teaches students how to evaluate creditable sources

Sometimes they take a bit of time loading.

Hope you find the videos useful.

Some students are masters at avoiding writing tests. Today in our workroom, one of my colleagues was saying she was so frustrated with students who miss tests and don’t come in later to write the tests they miss. Boy, I sure know how she feels. I’ve been spending far too much time and energy chasing after students to get them to write the tests they’ve missed because they were absent.

I’ve been thinking about the problem of missed tests for a while. I know that some students skip so they don’t have to write a test, but most students are away legitimately. I have several students who have missed (?) more than 13 classes since September. They are way behind and have missed far too much to do really well. I am really trying to be creative and help them earn their credit.

I’ve come to the conclusion that by giving my students too many chances, I might even be enabling them to avoid tests. School policy is if students are absent the day of a test, they have to write the missed test the day they come back to school. But, I don’t want my students to write the test the next day during class time. Why? They would be missing the new lessons and falling further behind. So, the students and I negotiate a time after school to write any missed tests. Sounds like a good solution doesn’t it? Well, it turns out not to be a solution at all; it turns out to be more of a problem. Often my students don’t come to write the test after school even though they agreed to come, or they have excuse after excuse for why they can’t come. Grrrr…

For my sanity and to stop any enabling that I might be doing, I’m going to remind my students about school policy regarding missed tests and tell them that from now on, if they miss a test they will write it the day they come back to class. No ifs, ands or buts!

I guess I’ve been reminded (again) about two things. Firsts, I’ve got to remember to work smarter so that I don’t have to work harder, and second I’ve got to be vigilant so that I don’t end up enabling kids to avoid writing tests.

What’s that expression that goes something like “if we don’t learn from history, we are doomed to repeat it”. I’ve had enough doom.

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• Dislcaimer

  These are my personal views and not those of my employer.