I needed to asses my students’ comprehension. It wasn’t enough to read their worksheets or to peek over their shoulders during individual work time. I needed to know exactly what my students had learned, so I decided to make a Tuesdays with Morrie Mid-Book Quest.
Where to start? Well first, I wanted my students to succeed. On the first quiz I gave, Quiz 1, a good amount failed it, despite the notes and discussion we had done in class. I thought that perhaps this was a combination of it being a pop quiz and it being slightly challenging–pushing students to think beyond the simple text.
Regardless, I knew this time around I wanted to give a study guide. So I created one. It was a lengthy study guide, asking for short answers and sentences. I wanted this because I wanted to make sure the students were grasping the essential information. The quest itself (quiz-test) was multiple choice, true-false, matching, and three short-answer, so relatively easy in comparison.
I assigned the study guide for homework on Wednesday. We went over it in class on Friday, then switched gears to another activity before actually taking the quiz.
The majority of my students did well! That was encouraging. However, as I reflect, I do want my next quiz to be more challenging and less teacher-guided. I want the students to be able to master the content independently, especially for those students who did not fill out the study guide beforehand. For the next quiz, my plan is to be a little tougher.
Here is photo collage of my documents. From left to right: study guide, my study guide answers, quest, answer key.
Here are the files to download, if you are interested: Mid-Book Study Guide & Answers, and Mid-Book Test & Answer Key.