20 February 2009

Rethinking Midyear and Final Exams
by
Tom Crumrine


If high schools need to be better then high schools need to change. Here is one story…

Introduction
New Hampshire has recently begun a statewide initiative to implement competencies in all high schools. This competency movement means that course credit will no longer be determined by seat time but by the attainment of specific learning goals. This means a change in how high school happens and how high school works. This study explains one example of how high schools might work differently in the future.

At a recent conference I attended Doug Reeves presented the idea that exams might come earlier and then there would be time for students to work on what they have not yet learned. Here is what I tried:

Based on Reeves’s work I decided to try using my summative midyear in some kind of formative way. At Concord High School exams are given the last week of January. This year I gave my students their midyear the week before we left for the December Holidays. Over the break I scored the sections of the test. I gave them a score on each of the major topics that we had covered so far. This resulted, not in one grade, but in nine for the test.

When we returned from the holiday break we were left with 2 weeks of school before the official exam time. With the test results I had identified who needed more help and in which areas. The class was then able to self select into two major categories. First, those students who needed little to no help and second, those students who needed help in several of the categories.

In some ways I was most concerned about the first group of students. What would they do? How will I make sure that they are not bored? How will I make sure their time is not wasted? In the end I decided that the students who needed little to know help would study atoms and nuclear chemistry in greater depth. Specifically, the students were given an article on the radioactive poisoning of the Russian spy Alexander Litvenienko, an internet exploration on nuclear submarines and more in depth study of isotopes than we had previously undertaken. All of these activities tied in with the competencies of the glass but they were more in the good to know category than in the must know category.

With the second group of students I began to think of ways to work on what they must know. I had four ninety minute classes before the exam so I considered how I would use each one.

For the first I returned the exams to all of the students and asked them to look at the areas where they had needs. My focus always was on what they could do to improve their understanding NOT on what they could do to improve their grade.

For the second day I organized the room into six stations. Each station was dedicated to one or two of the competencies that students had to show that they understood. Using an approach advocated by Fred Jones, I had posters on each table that showed the step by step approach to the more involved problems like how to write electron configurations. On the other tables I had books and information that directed students to read and improve their knowledge.

On the third day, darn this isn’t meant to sound like Genesis, we had similar activities that were meant to increase student understanding in each area. For the next 3 days we worked on this