Rethinking Final Exams

It's Spring time, and while the students think that summer is almost here, you see final exams looming up ahead. Before you make a multiple choice test that covers every topic for the whole year, consider the purpose of a final.

A final exam should assess the student's mastery of the material and readiness to move on to the next class. A final should not be a painful rite of passage. A long test that asks the student to regurgitate information rewards students for cramming facts into their short term memory. Furthermore, some students just take tests well - they have that type of intelligence. Getting an A on a multiple choice does not necessarily mean that the student has fully comprehended the information from the class.

Start by writing down what a student should know at the end of your class. If a successful student were to leave your class, what skills would she master? What skills should she be familiar with? What facts should she know?

Now, think broadly about assessments. What would a student need to do to show that he really learned the important lessons from your course? Perhaps the student could make a movie, a timeline, a mural, a one act play. Consider asking the student to make a Facebook fan page for a person from history, a literary character, an important mathematician, or foreign country. Board games, trivia games, and Jeopardy are all fun ways for students to show off their knowledge. Paired with an essay or some other written portion, you should be able to judge if the student has comprehended the content at least as well as a traditional exam.

When you make a final assessment more authentic, the students will enjoy pouring more effort into it. If you give your students a choice, each one can select a project that fits with his or her learning style. Yes, these projects may take longer to grade, but when have you ever taken the easy way out?

Quick Grading Tip

Every time I collected a set of essays or projects, I always told myself that I would grade them quickly. Once I started, though, I found myself writing a comment here, making a correction there. My drive to help my students told me to give specific help to each student, but the clock told me that I did not have time to spend fifteen minutes on every student's paper and project.

Here is a way to give helpful advice quickly. Use the "Find" and "Replace" function on your computer.

Grading on the computer is terrific because your comments look more professional than writing in red pen. You have a permanent record of comments for later reference or parent conferences. In fact, if a parent emails you with a question about an assignment, you can simply copy and paste the grade and comments into the email.

I have noticed that when grading an assignment, most students seem to make the same mistakes. When writing comments by hand, I seem to write "Avoid Run-On Sentences" or "Remember to Add a Topic Sentence" several times. Instead of writing the same ten comments over and over, I just assign them a number.

Make a list of positive and negative comments that you think that you will write. You may need to skim a few papers first, and you can always add to the list as you grade. Assign each comment a number (a two digit number works best). As you grade the papers or projects, type the number of the comment that fits the paper - I usually like to give one positive comment and two things for the student to work on. When find an unusual project, you might need to type a comment by hand (be sure to only use words and not numbers; I will explain why later.)

At the end of grading, you will have each student's name, a grade, and a few numbers that represent comments on your list. Now is the fun part, highlight the comment numbers and hold down "CTRL" ("CMND" on a Mac) and "h". This is the "find and replace" function. In the field for "find," type the number of the first command, like "50." In the "replace" field, type our the comment, like "Great use of quotes from the text." Now every student who had a "50" next to his or her name has the comment typed out. Do that for all of the codes, and you have specific comments for each student. You can now print them out, cut them into strips, and staple them to the students' papers.

Here are some things to make it work smoothly:

• Do your work in Excel and import your students' names from an electronic copy of your roster.
• If you are using a rubric (and you should be), make a column for each graded item. (Introduction: 8, Organization:10, Spelling and Grammar: 18). As long as the number grade is in its own column, Excel can add up the total grade for you. Again, be sure that the number grades do not conflict with the comment numbers.
• Use two digit numbers - if you use "2" for a comment, you might replace part of "12" by accident.
• If you want to be really fancy, print them on labels and stick them to the paper or project.
• Can families check grades on you school's website? See if there is a field where you can paste a copy of your grade comments.

Not Sure if Students are Doing the Reading? Let Them Prove it.

Since I taught literature, my students always had a novel that they should be reading at home, but I never knew for sure if they were keeping up with the reading. The common solution to this problem is the periodic reading comprehension test.

I gave many of these, but they took a lot of class time, they took even more time to grade, and they didn't always accomplish my goal. Some students did the reading but happened to skip over an important fact that was on the quiz. Other students, often the ones who struggled, spent twice as much time reading, but their poor test taking skills got in their way and earned them a grade that looked like they skipped the reading. Conversely, too many students did skip the reading but looked at plot summaries online or asked friends about the plot. These students often earned better grades than many of the students who completed the assignment.

One day, while I was trying to solve this problem, I realized that it's not my problem, it's the students'. The next day when I assigned the next week's reading, I asked the students if they liked reading comprehension quizzes. Of course, they did not. I then informed them that it would be up to them to prove to me that they read the assignment. I wanted to really push their problem solving skills, so I make half of the grade based on how effectively they proved that they read. The other half? how creative their solution was. One could also make it a contest to see which student or which class came up with the best solution.

I have never had students devote more effort to a reading assignment. Far more students completed the reading than usual. Unfortunately, some students lacked creativity, turning in notes from their mommies stating that they had done the reading. I also had a few that made a poster because at our school, they had done so many posters over the years that the word "project" = "poster." Conversely, I had very fun, unusual submissions. One student wrote his own quiz and then took it. A few students made home movies acting out the plot. One student did the same thing but with animated stick figures. One swore an oath on a Bible while another tape recorded herself reading the whole chapter aloud - I fast forwarded to the end. My favorite was a student who took a photograph every ten minutes of herself reading with a clock in the background; you could see the turned pages staking up as the clock hand moved.

Obviously, students in school need to write essays and take tests. But often, there is a fun and creative alternative to boring busy work. Instead of asking students to write the answer to a question, have them give the answer in anything except words. Or have them write a poem, act it out in class, or send it in a text message. Many students are so bored with the same old assignments that they really appreciate a teacher that does something unexpected.

And if you just have to give reading comprehension quizzes, roll a die or flip a coin right before the quiz to see which classes have to take it. The students think it is great because they don't have to take a quiz, but they still had to prepare for it, and you have half as many quizzes to grade.

Get A Handle On Late Work

Late work. Ugh. Why do I have to spend extra time grading late work just because the student did not spend time doing the work when it was due?

Look at late work a different way. Homework due dates are a way for us to help our students learn responsibility when the stakes are low so that they are prepared for the real world when the stakes are high. If a student loses a letter grade in my class because of missed deadlines, hopefully that student will learn her lesson and not ruin her credit as an adult because of missed payments. Isn't that worth an hour or two each week?

For most homework assignments, I simply deducted 10% per day for two days. Whatever system you use, make sure that the penalties motivate the students without destroying their grades due to one bad night. Otherwise, here are some ways that I learned over the years to juggle late work.

• Eliminate arguments - get a date stamp. You do not want to debate with a student about whether an assignment was late or not, especially at the end of the quarter when grades are due. I had a date stamp that I would use on any paper that was not submitted on the due date, and I would be sure to note if the student was absent or had another reason for turing in the assignment late.
• Late work receipts - for student and teacher. I taught middle school, so I wanted to provide a little extra support since my students were a little young for a sink-or-swim approach to late work. I printed out a form, three to a page. On the left of the form, there was a place for the student to write his or her name, the assignment, the due date, the excuse for being late, and day when he or she planned on turning it in. On the right side of the form was a tear off receipt where the student wrote the same information. When I walked around class collecting homework, I would give a form to each student who did not complete the assignment. The  student could keep half as a reminder to finish the work. I could keep the other half in case I needed to remind the student to turn in the work the next day. When the assignment was turned in, I would staple my receipt to the work to remind the student that the work had been turned in late.
• Just don't accept late work - the nice way. One of the best moments in my teaching, which I will write about another time, was when I gave a series of interesting and effective projects. Over a number of weeks, the students had to turn in six out of seven projects, so everyone got a rest week. Responsible students could save the rest week until the end, many students would use the rest week in the middle when they were having a busy time, and other students used it up at the beginning. Either way, projects were due on time, or they became the rest week (absent students could email projects or send them with someone already coming to school). A second missing project would earn a zero.  It made things a lot simpler. This plan works well for homework assignments too - anything where the students must turn in several items but can skip one without missing an important learning experience.

My Simplest and Best Teaching Idea I Ever Had

In my first two years of teaching, I noticed that I was wasting a great deal of time every week passing out papers. Every teacher knows that idle students mean trouble, so I either had to give the students busy work while I passed out papers, or I had to do it fast, hoping that the students would not resort to spit balls.

My solution? At the beginning of my third year of teaching, I asked all of the students to bring cereal boxes. When I had enough, I made them into mailboxes. I cut off three of the top flaps, put them in stacks of similar size, and stapled them together. At the end, I had a bank of mailboxes 10 high and 15 wide on the back counter of my classroom.

After exporting the students' names from my grade book, I color coded them by class, alphabetized by their last name, and imported them into file folder labels. Each student had his or her own mailbox in my classroom.

If I had graded papers to return, they just went into the mailboxes. Happily, students' grades were more private so that a student with a very low or very high grade on a test did not feel self conscience. If I had an assignment or project instructions to distribute, they would go in the mailboxes, and I could be confident that each student had a copy. I made sure to have multiple hole punchers and recycling bins nearby so that students could put papers in the proper place.

The last unexpected benefit was that students who caused delays in class because of minor discipline issues or tardiness could make up for my wasted time by stuffing mailboxes after school.

A few years later, my cereal box idea was so successful that the school bought me more permanent paper organizing boxes. They looked a little more professional, but they lacked that DIY charm of the cereal boxes.

How Teachers Can Use Clickademics.com

Sisyphus was an ancient Greek king whose punishment from the gods was to roll a huge stone to the top of  a hill everyday. At the end of each day, the stone rolled to the bottom of the hill, ready for the next day's rolling. If you think about it, teaching can be very Sisyphusian. If you have several sections of the same subject, you teach the same lesson several times a day, you review it later in the week, you review it again before the test, and you still have to start the process over again the next year. This doesn't even include the absent students.

I created  my website Clickademics to do some of the repetition automatically, freeing teachers up for more creative projects and more individualized help. I film teachers giving their best lessons and make them available to students online.

Here are some ways that Clickademics can help teachers be more effective:

• If an upcoming exam covers material that is in a Clickademics lesson, the teacher can link to the video lessons as a study aid.
• If a student is struggling with a basic concept, and the teacher cannot take class time to go over it again, the teacher can direct the student to the lesson so that he or she can review at home.
• If students are absent, the teacher can have them review online at home instead of staying after school for a make-up lesson. This is especially helpful in schools where student athletes often miss the last class of the day to travel for a game since these athletes can rarely stay after class since it would conflict with sports practice.
• All students have different learning styles, and some students benefit from hearing a lesson taught in multiple ways.

More and more, teachers are encouraged to provide two challenging classroom experiences: more project based learning and differentiated learning. The problem for teachers is that hands-on, creative projects take a great deal of class time, and differentiated learning requires multiple lesson plans to help students with different learning styles and abilities. If the students could learn the basics using online-video, there could be more class time for these effective yet complicated lessons and projects.

Of course, all classroom concepts can be found in the textbook, but all experienced teachers know that the students who really need help with the material rarely go home and read everything they should. Online video is a much more effective teaching tool.

If you want to learn more about project based learning and differentiated instruction, check out these books: