FIAE Chapter 6 Response

This chapter provided a handful of straightforward and practical tips and tricks for designing test questions.  While some of them seemed like common sense, many of them made me stop and think, “wow, I never thought of that before, but it makes a lot of sense.”  Others alluded to things that I had experienced on tests as a student, some good and some bad.  For example, I’ve always hated timed tests, and I’ve had teachers that have projected a ticking digital clock onto the screen at the front of the room during a test.  This only made me anxious and made it harder for me to focus on the test.  I can understand that putting a time limit on tests can sometimes be necessary and beneficial, such as when students are practicing for an AP exam.  I will try not to intimidate my students with timed testing unless it is for a purpose like AP prep.  Another thing that I can’t stand to see on tests as a student is questions like the first one the chapter introduces in which you are required to choose an answer that “best fits.”  Unfortunately, many AP exams ask questions like this (or at least I found that the literature and language composition ones did), but it doesn’t mean that teachers should model these questions in tests that they design themselves.  I certainly won’t do that in my classroom.  Instead, I will do as Wormeli suggests and include a variety of different questions that are clear and straightforward.  I was a little surprised by the section where he said to “include common errors as candidates for responses” (81)  To me, these sound a lot like trick questions, which most students dread and deem as “unfair,” but I can understand how they provide insight as to how well as student has mastered a subject.  I agree that it’s important to let students know ahead of time that there will be such questions on the test, however.