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I still have one more day of English exams to go.
I have had little to no sleep the last few nights as I finished writing my Latin exams. The grades were not high, but they weren't abysmally low either. In fact, I like the structure of my semester exams currently.
I learned from the midterm that more than 100 questions was too much, so this time I stopped at 100. The first 50 or so were the most recent things learned in class plus a sight passage. USUALLY I have short answer reading comp questions on my tests, but I was determined to have everything objective. So there were 10 questions of true/false (verum/falsum) on site passage, followed by grammar questions on stuff in the story. The next section are questions focusing on a specific thing, like subject/verb agreement, relative clauses, whatever we're working on. These are things that come usually straight from online drills students have access to. So, in my opinion, there's NEVER an excuse for missing any of those.
The final 50 questions were reading comps, mainly in Latin though some in English, on selections from every story we've read (in Ecce Romani; in CLC it was one per chapter). I like this part of the test because if they are doing it right, they are having to reread the stories even if they didn't in the process of studying. My tests aren't about drill and kill grammar; they are about reading. Reading and understanding. When students leave my course, I'd rather them complain about all the reading they had to do than all the grammar drills and declining and conjugating they had to do.
Anyway. I did curve the grades but only a very small handful of deserving students got A's, so that's ok.
What I want to work on next year, and I just have to figure out HOW to get it in place and work it, work it, work it--I want to get the students to reread the stories. BP said he has a reading log that students can turn in for extra credit. I want to see his. My reading log didn't really work well this year. Maybe with some sort of extra credit system, but one that also includes...I dunno...like turning in the reading log kept for the whole semester during the final exam for some extra credit.
Just more to ponder. And unfortunately I need to get my mind back into English and ponder that for the afternoon.
Time for lunch.
I have had little to no sleep the last few nights as I finished writing my Latin exams. The grades were not high, but they weren't abysmally low either. In fact, I like the structure of my semester exams currently.
I learned from the midterm that more than 100 questions was too much, so this time I stopped at 100. The first 50 or so were the most recent things learned in class plus a sight passage. USUALLY I have short answer reading comp questions on my tests, but I was determined to have everything objective. So there were 10 questions of true/false (verum/falsum) on site passage, followed by grammar questions on stuff in the story. The next section are questions focusing on a specific thing, like subject/verb agreement, relative clauses, whatever we're working on. These are things that come usually straight from online drills students have access to. So, in my opinion, there's NEVER an excuse for missing any of those.
The final 50 questions were reading comps, mainly in Latin though some in English, on selections from every story we've read (in Ecce Romani; in CLC it was one per chapter). I like this part of the test because if they are doing it right, they are having to reread the stories even if they didn't in the process of studying. My tests aren't about drill and kill grammar; they are about reading. Reading and understanding. When students leave my course, I'd rather them complain about all the reading they had to do than all the grammar drills and declining and conjugating they had to do.
Anyway. I did curve the grades but only a very small handful of deserving students got A's, so that's ok.
What I want to work on next year, and I just have to figure out HOW to get it in place and work it, work it, work it--I want to get the students to reread the stories. BP said he has a reading log that students can turn in for extra credit. I want to see his. My reading log didn't really work well this year. Maybe with some sort of extra credit system, but one that also includes...I dunno...like turning in the reading log kept for the whole semester during the final exam for some extra credit.
Just more to ponder. And unfortunately I need to get my mind back into English and ponder that for the afternoon.
Time for lunch.
