After reading all of The Kite Runner, I was faced with the decision that students had to take a final test. While talking to my teacher we developed a lesson idea called "A Silent Discussion;" in this lesson students were given a blank sheet of paper and had to ask two questions about the text. Next students will sent their paper with the two questions to the person on their left (we will be sitting in circle fashion). Students had have fifteen minutes to answer on of the two questions, they choose which one they wish to answer. After the ten minutes students pass the paper once again but this time they can either answer the other question or ask a new question (they will have fifteen minutes to do this). Once all students are done we went into discussion mode.
Once in discussion mode we discuss the questions as a class. Whichever student feels they have a question worthy of asking for everyone to discuss is welcomed to raise their hands and leave it for the group/class to discuss. Students were told from the start that the questions they were developing were going to serve a purpose; these questions were going to be part of their test.
After trying out this lesson with my periods three and four we noticed that these questions were valuable and that our idea worked out. We chose ten questions from period two and ten from period three and these questions developed by them and even some of them discussed in class were the questions that appeared on their book test. Because they were told this from the start,they were willing to care about what they were doing and they took time, effort and thinking into what questions they were writing, answering and asking.
Sitting down this week and correcting the number of book test I noticed that this was a fair way to beat the testing system and that it gave students a fair chance at having some power over their education. I also asked them what they had thought about the test being made in this form after they finished taking it and they responded that it was the first time they did this and also that they really liked the way it was set up. Many of them felt it was challenging but they also said that if you had read the book it was information you should have known. I am glad that instead of making a test for them, I decided to have them develop their own test.
This experience is something I will take with me beyond student teaching and I feel that it has also been one of the experiences that has taught me a lot about education and the power of testing.
Lucy, was the test the passing of the questions or did you develop a test afterwards from the questions that were passed? Either way, I love the idea of the students determining what the most important part of their reading was, what they should be assessed on knowing.
ReplyDeleteKayla by the time we were done passing questions and having a discussion we had about 40 questions from each class. We only needed ten questions for each test so each class made their own based on their questions. I went over all the questions with my CT and we chose which ones were the ten best ones. Some we sort of changed around using the wording of the students but only like one or two. They had some really thoughtful questions that we could have never came up with. Both my CT and I left with a sense of happiness because our students are so smart; the test each class compiled was beyond our expectations. After administering it, it showed us that if you read the book, you should have been able to answer all the questions. It gave everyone a fair chance and they were so flattered to see their question got picked:) Giving back power to the students and hacking the system leaves a feeling of accomplishment.
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