Bresciani+Journal+1

Each week I visit a second grade classroom for three hours. I try to attend different days of the weeks so that I can observe various activities. Usually the students have the same morning routine. They complete the daily math problems, practice their “letter of the day” and respond to their journals. Usually after their morning work is complete the teacher begins to work with them on reading and writing. However, this week when I attended the school, the teacher asked me if I could administer their Social Studies test after their morning work. The test was made up of just true and false questions. The test posted statements such as “Every family is the exact same. T/F” The test was not timed, and each question was read to the students twice, and then time was allotted for each student to answer the question.

After the students completed the test, I was given a chance to help the teacher grade them. I was not around to listen to her Social Studies lessons on "types of families", therefore this prevented me from observing whether or not the test assessed the material my teacher had taught. However I was able to make a few observations to help me analyze the assessment. First, I was able to observe that the lowest grade was an eighty, and the majority of the students scored higher than a ninety. This would usually help the teacher generalize that the class understood the material. Yet, there were also certain aspects of the teach that make me question the accuracy of the assessment.

True/False tests provide the student with a 50% chance to get the answer correct. If students were confused, they could most likely just take an estimated guess, and have a likely chance or receiving the right answer. Although True/False tests are easy to assess as a rubric is not required, the questions used may not provide the teacher with enough information about the child’s understanding. In other words, just using true/false questions allows a student to guess on an answer, and have a high percent of getting the answer right.

A way to improve the true and false assessment and allow the teacher to assess a students knowledge on different types of families, would be to mix the the true and false questions with short answer questions. Short answer questions could provide a student the opportunity to verbally express their knowledge with out any help from chance. If I could make any personal alterations to the test assessment, I would provide different types of questions that could identify the child’s knowledge on the topic, and provide both the teacher and student with proper feedback about each child’s understanding towards the topic being taught.