Week 2 Reflection

August 31st - September 4th

On Friday, September 4th, my 8th grade students did a grammar and mechanics pretest. I used the program Beyond Question to create the pretest and students used responders to send their answers to the multiple choice questions electronically. I hope to use this program often in the future because the program actually calculates graphs for each classes' answers to each question. I will use this tool next week to review the correct answers with the students. This way, they will be able to see the distribution of answers in their class, while keeping their own scores anonymous. This tool is also very helpful for my action research because it totals data for me and creates graphs that I can use for presentations.

While I was skimming through the 8th grade language textbook for question ideas, I decided that I would make my pretest questions challenging. I assumed that the students would know the basics (i.e. capitalizing the first word of a sentence, separating series with commas, end marks, etc.). Instead, I developed questions that applied to more complex rules of mechanics. I did make sure, however, that each of my questions could be referenced from their textbook, indicating that these concepts are intended to be addressed this year.

After each class took the pretest, I would ask them how well they felt they performed. Most students said it was pretty simple. (Students also recorded their answers on paper and indicated their certainty level for each question). However, I was surprised to see that barely any student got higher than an 80%, and most students failed. Now looking back at the test, I am sure I made it too difficult. I felt guilty every time I handed out pretests to the subsequent classes. Was it fair to give them such a difficult test? Will a pretest like this discourage students?

Mrs. Chico gave me great advice for the next time I create any test: take it yourself, and have someone else take it. Not only will errors be more easily found, but the difficulty level will also be assessed.