A couple of weeks ago, I blogged about how I was going to
assess my students for final exams. Today, I want to reflect on what was good (or even great!) and what I can make better next time.
First of all, let me share my own personal beliefs about finals:
- They should not penalize students.
- They should reflect what students can do (proficiency), not test discreet knowledge about a topic (especially grammar).
- Most students should be able to finish the exam with time to spare.
And, most importantly:
GRADING THESE TESTS SHOULD NOT TAKE HOURS OF MY PRECIOUS TIME!
I have 120 students. I consider this to be a very manageable number of kids – the classes are just big enough that there is always someone willing to speak, but yet they aren’t so big that I fight the classroom management battle. (For an in-depth look at how I survived almost twice that may students last year,
read this!) I also don’t want to spend a single minute of my break grading. I want to be done by the time I leave the building, grades entered, ready to relax and plan for the next semester.
Level 3
I am so pleased with this final!
The reading was manageable for all of my students. Using the last chapter of our class novel worked perfectly for us. I saw smiles and looks of surprises and heard gasps as they discovered the final plot twist in the novel,
Noche de Oro by Kristy Placido.When I called students back in groups to chat with me, the conversations all began with students commenting on how much they loved reading this book. I specifically called them up in groups of similar abilities. This made them all feel comfortable – no one felt left behind in the conversation and (from reports, anyway) no one felt like they had to hold themselves back for the sake of someone else’s comfort. And they ALL want Kristy to write book #3!
After discussing the novel, I gave students the chance to show what they could do with everything they had learned this semester. We talked about world pollution, poverty, and about how grateful we all are to live in the Midwest. It was a great set-up that I will definitely use again.
For the writing, using their best Spanish, students could choose any world issue we had covered in class and describe it in as much detail as possible, offer a solution, and offer an opinion. This was a great prompt! Students were able to really show off their abilities.
In the listening section, I found a 45 second commercial about a sauce we had tasted earlier this semester. It’s from Costa Rica (the setting of the book), so it fit in with our general theme. Students completed a cloze activity (no word bank) and an ordering activity. The visuals from the commercial really helped! I will definitely do this again.
Huge success!
Level 4
What can I say about my level 4 final? Not much!
I’m happy with the format; it was the same as my level 3 final. The elements of the exam? No so much. When your star student (the one who loves Spanish so much that he completed a 6 week summer honors program through IU in Chile and runs into your class every day because it is the highlight of his day) looks at you and asks, “What are you doing to us? This is WAY too much new vocabulary!” Well, let’s just say, you know you did a TERRIBLE job of creating this final!
Sometimes that happens. They actually did a fabulous job on the final, but the frustration level in completing the reading was palpable – you could cut through it with a knife, it was so thick! I simply chose the wrong thing to read. Sometimes I forget that me understanding an article perfectly does not translate to my students being able to do that.
Lesson learned. Next time, I will make sure I plan a novel to end right at the final so they have a familiar context and lots of familiar vocabulary. Research shows that how you feel at the end of an experience is the criteria your brain uses to create the memory of that experience. I do NOT want my students remembering the pain and torture of a poorly created exam as the basis of their memory of my class!
I promise, I’ll do better next time.
