Let's Test & Assess!

 One requirement from our teacher and the second grade teacher was to make a pre and post test as a form of assessment for the students.  We created this test by using Google Forms. I was never aware that tests can be created using a Google software. I have never used this tool but it was awesome! Everyone from my class was able to collaborate to create the assessments for our students. Each group was in charge of their own subject, my subject was Early Explorers. I am not a big fan of written tests as a form of assessment, but the process of creating one was very interesting and informative. 

For the Pre-Test, we looked in the textbook for the first grade social studies curriculum and tried to connect it to what they would be learning this year. This was a way for us as teachers to access the students' prior knowledge on early travelers. We wanted to make sure that all of the students understood the previous material. My group outlined this pre-test to have a higher order of thinking and allow students to use their recalling skills through the cognitive lens. As you can see through the link some of the questions are short answer and the rest are multiple choice. This gives students an opportunity to see what they will learning in each section. I liked creating the short answer questions because there could be more than one correct answer. The pre-test was definitely harder to create because we didn't teach the students when they were in first grade. After creating the pre-test it was much easier for my group to figure out exactly what we needed and wanted to teach our students. 

Just last week my class created the Post-Test. As a group, we decided to keep some of the same questions as the pre-test and make changes to the rest. These questions are to see if the students understood the material and stored it into their long-term memory. The post test shows us as teachers what the students learned and how well they learned it. This test was much easier to create because we asked many questions in our direct lesson that we used as questions in the pre-test. According to Bloom's Taxonomy we wanted to see the students reach a higher order of thinking, therefore we gave the students more short answer questions. This required students to apply their knowledge based on what they learned not what they already knew. This allows the students to think deeper and evaluate themselves on the thinking process. The results from the post-test make me nervous because I hope as a teacher I did a good job teaching them the necessary material.