Test Questions

I spent the past three days writing test questions for the science end-of-year assessments.  It sounds kind of easy.  It was HARD.  I mean REALLY HARD.  I've written to a prompt before.  This was the mother of all prompts.  We had to write a question that assessed the content, that gave some information about how students were doing with the intended learning outcomes, and that wasn't too hard or too easy for fifth graders.  Oh boy. 

It was an incredible experience.  The other teachers were there because they really wanted to be and the group I was with was intelligent, creative, and funny.  Even working hard from 8:30 am to after 4 each day I was able to write only 12 good questions.  Others wrote more, but 12 was average.  It doesn't sound like much when you realize that was only four questions per day.  But it really did take that long to come up with questions that met all the criteria.

I'm proud of the work we did.  We won't see any of these questions on a test until 2011 or 2012 at the earliest.  Still, it was incredibly interesting and I get to go back tomorrow to try writing questions that use flash graphics.  FUN!