5 Ways to Use Test Results WITHOUT Adding Them to Your Grade Book

Tests have become such a hot ticket topic in education. In previous blog posts like What’s Wrong with Standardized Testing and Why Projects are Better than Tests, I have discussed my feelings about standardized testing and testing in general. However, tests can serve a vital purpose in the learning process, especially if they aren’t entered into a grade book. Once we write a grade into our grade book, it means that the learning has stopped. However, we can take the results of tests and use them to drive our instruction and be sure that learning is complete. In order to do this properly, we ideally give our test a week or so before we wish to be “done” teaching a certain topic. Or we allot a portion of our instructional time to continue working on skills that have not yet been mastered. Then we take the test results and use them to drive our instruction.  After the additional instruction time, another test can be given, or even better a project, if a grade is needed.

Here are five different strategies that you can take your test results and use them to drive your instruction:

1.) Conference with your students – Take time to sit down with each student to review their results. Talk about both strengths and weaknesses and set specific goals for the next step in their growth. We most commonly do this with reading and writing, but the same concept can be used for many subjects. For example, on a Social Studies test, you might discuss with students the topics that they struggled with on their assessment and suggest (or assign) further research into that topic. In Math, you might suggest a problem solving strategy that would better suit them or point out a simple misconception that they have and suggest ways to correct it.

2.) Create small groups – Take your assessment and create a list of skills or topics that were assessed. Then, review your assessments to see which students are still struggling with which skills or topics. Using this information, create temporary small groups based on the needs of individual students. Use these groups to work on that specific need. These groups might each meet with you or they might be given targeted assignments to help guide them through conquering those missing skills.

3.) Allow students to correct their own mistakes – Give students back their tests with the incorrect answers circled, but no clues given as to the correct answer. Ask students to correct each question, allowing them to use notes, books and additional research. Ask students to do their corrections in color or on an additional piece of paper to prevent a confusion of original answers and corrections. During the process, students will reflect on their own learning and recognize the gaps that they need to fill. 

4.) Create need based activities or projects  - If the majority of your students are lacking on a specific skill based on test results, create activities, lessons or projects that will help the students have additional time to work with the concept. For example, one year my students were struggling with long operations – addition, subtraction, multiplication and division. So I sat down and created a project to help them work on these skills in a real life setting. The resulting project was my balanced checkbook project. This project forced them to use the operations in different ways, but they were so excited to figure out their weekly salary and get spending that there were no qualms and they had a much better understanding by the end of the project.

5.) Provide tiered assignments – For single skill assessments, tiered assignments can come in handy. Students all continue to work on that skill after the test, but they work at a different level depending on their test score. If they have mastered the skill, they are given extension activities to push them into higher level thinking skills. If they have not mastered the skill, they are given time to review. If they have grasped the skill, but not mastered it, they are given time to practice.

One way I used to do this was with the prove it, solve it, fix it approach. In this strategy, all of the students are given a paper with a set of problems. ( I usually used this in math, but it could be done in other subjects as well.) The lowest level students are given the set of problems with the answers provided. They are asked to prove that those answers are correct. By having the correct answer already, the pressure to get the right answer is off and the students have a chance to focus on the process, which is more important anyways.
Mid level students are given the same problem set and asked to solve each problem. This gives them a chance to continue practicing the skill. Higher level students or students who seem to have mastered the skill work on the fix it level. They are given the same problem set, but with incorrect answers. The answers preferably have common mistakes that teachers see regularly with that skill. The students at this level then try to figure out how the students got the incorrect answer and then fix it. Students at this level build higher level thinking and continue working on the skill at another level. You can download a subtraction with regrouping prove it, try it, fix it sheet for free from my Teachers Pay Teachers store to check out this strategy further.

How do you use test scores to drive instruction in your classroom?

Why are Projects Better than Tests?

Tests, especially multiple choice tests don’t tell me whether students understand a concept.  As inconvenient as it is to notice, students taking a standard multiple choice test have a 20 – 25% chance of passing a multiple choice test if they can’t read any of the questions, just depending on how lucky they are in their guesses.  In fact, I’ve had students do better on a test when they didn’t read the test than when they took the time to try and read the words on a test.  As a teacher, a multiple choice test given to a set of silent third graders tells me:

1.  How good of a reader my student is

2.  How good my student is at making inferences

3.  How much vocabulary my student has

4.  How good my student is at using test taking strategies like process of elimination

5.  How good my student is at sitting still and quiet for long periods of time

 

And all of this is on a good day.  If students are having a bad day, a multiple choice test may tell me:

1.  Who had a good nights sleep last night

2.  Who ate a nutritious breakfast

3.  Who had a fight with a sibling, parent or friend this morning

4.  Who isn’t feeling well due to a virus or cold

5.  Who is distracted by the class playing outside on the playground, the kids fooling around in the halls, or the clock ticking away

 

Okay tests aren’t perfect, but they’re convenient and time saving devices, right?  This allows us to take away less instructional time, right?  Not really.  When you figure in:

1.  We spend a lot of time preparing students for a test – teaching them the specific skills, vocabulary and type of questions will be on a test.

2.  We stop all learning to take time out for tests and require students to sit still and be quiet until every child is done.

3.  Because we require students to sit still for so long, we have to take further instructional time to let them “unwind” after a test.

4.  Children who did poorly, or who are anxious that they might have done poorly on a test, may shut out everything done in class after the test until they receive their score.

5.  We still need to spend time grading the tests and reviewing the scores with students.

 

Alright, but the argument goes that students still need to take tests so that they will be prepared for their future.  Think about your every day life.  When was the last time you took a test that WASN’T part of a class?  In Cosmo magazine?  At the doctor’s office?  Probably the last time you took a test that impacted your life was when you took your teacher certification test, which is a whole other can of worms!  However, when was the last time you completed a project?  Wrote an article?  Created a presentation?  Taught others about something you had recently learned?  As a teacher and a business person, I am much more likely to do the projects, the presentations, the teaching the staff about what I learned at a conference than I am to take a test.  The same could be said about 99% of the jobs that our students will hold in their future.  So a good generalization would be to say that 99% of success in life is based on project completion and 1% is based on test results.  Unfortunately, in many classrooms today at least 75% of a child’s grade is based on tests and quizzes while only about 10 – 20% is based on projects.  How exactly is this helping our students?

The solution?  PROJECTS!  And not always close ended, follow the steps to a set conclusion projects.  Students need time for open ended inquiry projects, research projects, present my learning projects and create something completely new projects.  But, projects are time consuming and teachers have so much to get through, so how do you find the time?

1. Integrate!  Cover multiple standards with a single project.  My new Create Your Own Cookie Science Inquiry project covers math, science and literacy standards.  My African Folktales Online Poster Project covers social studies, literacy and technology standards.  Even projects like my Balanced Checkbook Project covers math, social studies, literacy and technology standards.  This means that instead of giving three or four tests, one project can cover all of those standards and actually save you time.

 

2.  Let students evaluate themselves.  Many of my projects, including the Build Your Own Vocabulary Game project and Math Video Creation project give students a chance to evaluate their own work before you sit down and conference with them.  This means that the conversation is geared up and ready to go. A simple two minute conference is all that is needed to explain to students where they are strong and what they need to work on next time.

  3.  Use a rubric.  Scoring a rubric with 5 – 10 categories often takes less time than grading a 30 question test.  Also, if you go over the rubric with students BEFORE they begin their project, they have a clear idea of what you are looking for and there is so much less of the “I didn’t understand what it was asking of me.” conversation at the end of an assessment.  All of the projects I have available in my Teachers Pay Teachers store come with some sort of a rubric.  However, I also use rubrics in my Reading Response Journals, Math Problem Solving Journals and Writing Journals.  So, by the time we get to a project, my kids are so used to looking at rubrics, they can often grade themselves.  In fact, sometimes I have students grade themselves on the rubric using a green pen and then go through their work and mark my own grades with a red pen, so that they can see how I look at their work versus how they look at their work.  Often you will find that kids are harder on themselves than we are on them.

  4.  Multitask!  Projects don’t have to be done when the entire class is sitting still in one place, like tests do.  Instead, you can be teaching a mini lesson in one area of your classroom while students work on a project in another area.  In fact, projects can be a regular part of your math or literacy centers, making one less center for you to have to plan each week.

  5.  Get rid of the fluff.  Projects – when done right – are fun for kids.  So, instead of inserting craftivities or other “fluff” to make our lessons more fun, let students work on a project.  They will have fun, learn a lot and give you a good idea of where they are in a variety of different areas.  Kids will agree too.  I have had kids give up recess to build virtual field trips to the desert for my Deserts of the World project and forgo watching a movie to work on designing projects for their Earth’s Materials projects.  Kids like projects, simple and easy.

 

Finally, according to the constructivist school of thought, kids learn more doing the project than from reading an article, listening to a lecture, watching a video or working on a math problem.  Now, I think that all of those are great ways to build up background knowledge, but students won’t truly understand anything if we ask them to absorb it and spit it back out on a test.  However, if they take that information, use it in a project, process it and then are asked a question on those end of the year tests that unfortunately public schools cannot avoid, they might just remember the information. 

Food for thought.  What do you think about projects?  Do you use them?  How much?  Why or why not?  I’d love to see a conversation about this begin in the comments.