Fair Isn't Always Equal Chapter 6

“Creating Good Test Questions," chapter 6, illustrates the importance of using a variety of questions and prompts when designing a test . It suggests using a mixture of traditional prompts such as: multiple choice, true/false, matching and some non-traditional ones such as: exclusion brainstorming, analogies, and diagrams to creating test that fit into your differentiated classroom. The chapter goes on to talk about how to use numerous ways to create test questions that are not used to stump or confuse students, but instead they are used to help determine if a student is truly "mastering" the topic. All of the combined suggestions help create the best possible assessment. Designing your test with the students in mind and figuring out what works for them is very important. Each student hates some parts of tests or does poorly on certain styles, such as multiple choice, matching, or essays (which I feel was said a lot in our reactions).The chapter stresses to make tests efficient for students as well as keeping exams only as long as they need to be so they don't get worn out and beware of timed exams, since a lot students do not work very well under pressure.

Mikes reaction to this chapter speaks volumes when he says: "Creating tests and grading them is such a rewarding experience for the teacher because you see progress in each student. I think that when you create a test, it gives you a chance to show you are human to your students by putting humor into it, or making it a positive experience, not just a stressful one". A lot of people felt as if this chapter was full of "practical information" (Beth). Creating test is hard. The wording and organization process is stressful and writing effective tests to make sure that your students will succeed in is an even harder task. Everyone seemed to feel as if "making tests is very hard, and it was very nice to have some advice on how to make tests better" (Erich) and this chapter gave some good advice. This chapter also goes into how "there is NEVER a reason to trick students. All questions should be clear and should be about common sense details, not obscure details, such as the color shirt a character was wearing in a certain scene" (Becca). In the end this chapter brought some clarity to creating tests and hopefully will be very useful to us in the future!