Reading Quizzes & Exams

Reading Quizzes

Reading quizzes serve many purposes - but chief among them are: 

1)  Get students to do the reading (students are faced every day with many choices of what to do and not do - if they are not quizzed - the majority (by these upper grade levels) will not do the reading)

  2) Identify students who ARE doing the reading but not comprehending (and so intervention and a plan to improve that situation can occur)   3) Give students credit for the work (the reading) that they've done.

My reading quizzes do not require thinking - just that you did the reading.  This was really difficult with some readings (especially Literary Criticism).

The trick is (and rather than a "trick" I think it's an art - you need to write questions that are 1) Not trivia.  In other words a question about the color of Tom Sawyer's shirt is not fair and will not help you discover if the student did the reading.  2) At the same time it must be specific enough that it would be very unlikely that a student would know the answer from just reading a summary (ie Cliff Notes, Sparknotes, etc.).

So, if the color of Tom Sawyer's shirt (and I'm making this up) is white AND they use it as a flag of surrender - then that is indeed a great question.  The online summary is most like just to say that they surrendered.

Here are Six Examples of Lessons that that Reading Quizzes that you can look at in both Word and PDF formats:

1)  The Anglo-Saxons Historical Background (more of a test because of the length of the reading - it counts for 200 points)

2) The Wife of Bath's Prologue

3) Macbeth Act 1 (also 200 points)

4) The History of Love pages 19-45

5) All Quiet on the Western Front Chapter 1

6) Persepolis Pages 1 to 32

Exams

My exams are designed to see if students have been paying attention during discussions, group works, assignments, essays, etc.  How are they putting together everything that we've done in class.

Another good reason to give students an exam on the Unit is to  help them prepare for college (98% of my students went on to college).  Most colleges give (or used to give) multiple choice exams.  They will also be seeing multiple choice on the ACT & the SAT exams.  The more comfortable students are with those type of exams, the better.

It is more than possible to write a good, thinking exam that accurately reflects the thought that's been happening in the class.  It does take time.  I don't believe in "trick questions or answers" -- though I'm not exactly sure what those are (sometimes a student will say there is a trick answer, and I'm like "no, that's the wrong answer - and it's not close to the right answer and it's not meant to fool the the test taker."