Middle of the night draft
By Tom Crumrine
In November I attended a conference and Douglas Reeves suggested giving midyears early, providing corrective instruction and giving the midyear again. A sysnopsis is found here:
So, I decided to try the experiment myself…
Introduction
The idea was to give the midyear at an earlier point so I decided to go with the logical pre-Christmas pre-exam. I have always wondered why we give first semester exams after a 2 week holiday so I just gave them early.
Upon our return to class in January I did the following things:
- Over the holidays I “graded” the exams by highlighting areas where students could add more information.
- On the first day back I gave students the exams and asked them to provide more information in the highlighted areas.
- When I got the test back I marked the scored versus the standards.
- With the scores v. the standards I was able to develop a plan to educate groups of students.
- In the two weeks after the holidays and before exams I provided corrective instruction
When it came time to take the exam I created a test that tested the same standards but with different questions. If students had already scored a 5 on a particular measurement topic they did not have to respond to the new question. So some students had to do all 9 questions and some had to do only 1. (All students completed a common part of the exam that assessed basic science skills—calculation of density, metric conversions, lab safety, etc.)
The Results
Figure 1: Items 1-9 are the measurement topics. The numbers at the bottom are the averages of all student scores. The test dates were exactly 1 month apart with a 2 week holiday break at the beginning of the month and four 90 minute classes of corrective instruction prior to exam week.
Reflection
Obviously I was excited about the graph and the fact that the average for all measurement topics went up. But there are both positives and concerns with this approach.
Concerns
We spent four 90 minute periods on the corrective part. I will argue later that this is not wasted time but we did not go on to new material.
The students who did well the first time around actually did go on to new material but they were self directed as I spent most of the time working with the students who needed more help. The students worked on an extension of the atomic structure unit where they investigated isotopes by looking at the poisoning death of Russian agent Alexandre Litvenienko. The students that were good at being active self directed learners told me that they enjoyed this project and they were glad that they got to do it. But those students that were not good at self directed learning did not get much out of this extension project.
I scored both tests. I tried very hard to eliminate any bias that would come from doing this by not looking at the December scores when scoring the January test and by creating specific rubrics for each question—but the fact remains…
Positives
The corrective instruction took some time but all student scores went up. The scores were based on understanding of the topic so the understanding of my students increased with the extra two weeks of instruction. The research backs up depth over breadth but as a teacher who learned science in a different era—the one of breadth over depth with the memorization of tons of factoids—it feels like I’m doing something wrong.
A couple of students asked if they could forgo the extra project and help other students. I granted this request and the results were great. Seeing one student teach another how to describe the model of the atom is the kind of scene that makes you nearly tear up.
Students loved the fact that each test was essentially customized to them. Once they got over the newness of the fact that they only had to answer certain questions they really liked the approach. This also was the “reward” for those students who did well the first time around.
Conclusion
While I have concerns the positives do outweigh them in my mind. In order for high school to change we must change some things about high school. This is one experiment that will be worth repeating.
