Questions on Tests…Okay to Better

~ janellebfox

I have attended some trainings lately that have focused on asking better questions on tests, not just the same ol’ solve ’em kind. Here is a few that we had come up for our last Precalc test.

  • We added this one. It really showed if the students knew their vocabulary and the differences between the graphs. (We were proud of this one!)

pc test question 16

  • We also added this one. I like that the students had to categorize the choices into what worked and what doesn’t. It felt very SBAC-ish.

pc test question 7

  • I had thought of including this question, but it ended up on the cutting room floor. Mostly this is because i felt we didn’t give the names of these tools quality time in class and this particular problem may be better suited to a group quiz situation where the students can discuss it with one another and then formulate a response. (So I am keeping in my brain as a quiz question for next year!)

pc test question 10

  • This last one was a test question, but I really felt it could have been better. I could have made it more open and creative for the students. I think a better version would have been to ask students to create their own polynomial of a particular degree, say 4, that had a specific number of each of the roots. Maybe next year on that one!

pc test question 8

Writing test questions that cover the material but at the same time challenge the students to really show their mathematical understanding is a hard job! But I am always trying to improve and increase the amount of thinking I ask my students to demonstrate to me!

2 thoughts on “Questions on Tests…Okay to Better”

  1. I like those questions! Maybe to address the question that found the cutting floor, the Descartes’ question, you could take away the name of the Theorem and just present some facts? For instance, a polynomial, f, has the following values: f(3) = -2 and f(5) = 10. What can you conclude about the root(s) of this polynomial? Why?
    I’m with you, we talk briefly about the name of some theorems, but we don’t explicitly mention them a ton, so it doesn’t seem fair to address the name on a quiz/test.
    Cool questions, I’m going to steal some for next year!

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