WWYD; marking midterms many students did poorly

amother

Powderblue

Tue, Jan 30 2018, 4:30 pm

WhatFor wrote:

Are you the op of the other midterm thread? Otherwise, what's your role in all this?

. Role is the teacher. First year teaching. Subbed for two years prior.
Not sure which other thread

amother

Coral

Tue, Jan 30 2018, 4:35 pm

amother wrote:

The midterm is over. Teacher obviously thought it was a clear and straightforward test. Students misunderstood the questions and many did very poorly.
What to do now?

If a substantial portion of the students misunderstood questions, I'd venture that it was the fault of the exam's author, not the students. A substantial portion of students failing also suggests that the information was not presented properly.

You should present this to the school's administration, and ask for advice. IMNSHO, the midterm should not be counted unless it pulled up the student's average.

thunderstorm

Tue, Jan 30 2018, 4:39 pm

I don't mean to be insulting but as constructive criticism . When more than just a few students don't do well it's usually a sign that their teacher didn't give over the material well. You as the teacher need to reevaluate your lessons so that you don't have this experience by finals again.
I would advise a crash course of the material that the students were just tested on and give an oral exam to each student with 5 questions and those points should be added to the mark on the midterm.

amother

Powderblue

Tue, Jan 30 2018, 4:40 pm

amother wrote:

I didn't blame the students. Just asked what to do now.
Can't give another test obviously.
Will attempt to prepare students better in the future.
Upset because they did well on previous test.

seeker

Tue, Jan 30 2018, 4:40 pm

I would grade it on a curve and seriously assess what went wrong so the test can be set up better next time. You should also have another couple of objective, experienced people look over future tests before giving them to the students.

Grading on a curve - putting it simply, you could do fancy statistics but I doubt most teachers do - means you take the highest grade - the highest normal grade; if you have one super-genius who got 98 but the next-highest grade is 70... then that grade becomes the new 98 or A. So everyone who got 70% of the test correct would receive a score of "A" or equivalent number grade (I think it's a bit of a stretch to call it 100 if it wasn't, but 95 shows respectably that they performed around the top of the class.) And if most of the average kids got between 50-60 then you could call 50 a C+ and 60 a B. If despite the difficulty of the test most kids got above 40 and two kids got 20, it's probably reasonable to call 20 an F but 40 a passing grade. Unless the kids getting 20 did so because they threw up their hands in despair after the first few confusing questions; maybe the lower-scoring students should be offered some kind of make-up opportunity.

amother

Powderblue

Tue, Jan 30 2018, 4:41 pm

Bizzydizzymommy wrote:

Love this idea.
Will discuss with principal.

amother

Coral

Tue, Jan 30 2018, 4:44 pm

amother wrote:

I didn't blame the students. Just asked what to do now.
Can't give another test obviously.
Will attempt to prepare students better in the future.
Upset because they did well on previous test.

I didn't suggest that you blamed the students.

I also told you what you need to do. You need to go to the administration and tell them what happened, and ask for their input on your next step. As I said, given that it seems that the test was defective, it would only be fair to ignore it. But you should not do that without talking to the administration.

amother

Goldenrod

Tue, Jan 30 2018, 4:47 pm

When I was in school - and there were questions that most students got wrong on account of it being poorly worded - or clearly not taught - the questions were ignored for marking purposes.

this would not work if there were many questions that fall into this category.

seeker

Tue, Jan 30 2018, 4:51 pm

amother wrote:

If it's the same questions that all the kids missed, that makes a lot of sense. Or if they all got the same wrong answer.

amother

Powderblue

Tue, Jan 30 2018, 5:12 pm

seeker wrote:

If it's the same questions that all the kids missed, that makes a lot of sense. Or if they all got the same wrong answer.

Yes mostly the same questions. Maybe will see if have enough to mark based off the rest.

Blessing1

Tue, Jan 30 2018, 5:14 pm

If many students did poorly, either the material wasn't taught correctly or the test wasn't written in a way that the students understood the questions. You should really talk to the principal about what to do about it. Maybe remake the test & have the girls retake it? (Not that the students will appreciate it...)

Miri7

Tue, Jan 30 2018, 5:16 pm

This is a learning moment for you. I’d sit down with a mentor teacher and ask for her ideas. How to figure out how to write better exams and how to teach more effectively. Try to identify the questions most kids got wrong. Evaluate how that material was taught. Maybe even involving students for feedback on presentation - why do they think those questions were hardest? Was that material the hardest? Brainstorm different approaches to teaching that kind of material.

seeker

Tue, Jan 30 2018, 5:43 pm

Also, remember to apologize for the mistake and explain your grading decision, whichever one you end up choosing. Even if they get a high mark after all, taking a confusing test is very stressful, plus they will respect you more if you explain the change in grading rather than just hand out high marks when they know they had no idea what they were doing.

amother

Ruby

Tue, Jan 30 2018, 6:47 pm

College professor here: it’s very hard to write a good exam. I’ve taught for years but still sometimes have cases where I realize, after the fact, that certain questions were worded in such a way that there were several acceptable answers to the printed but not my intended question. It happens. I’ve thrown out questions that too many students have missed. I’ve also curved grades in classes where I realistically have decided that my exam was too ambitious, although that was mostly earlier in my career. Seeker’s instructions were pretty clear, and no student in penalized that way. Students will respect you for your desire to be fair.
Having a second set of eyes look at future tests will be helpful.

Notsobusy

Tue, Jan 30 2018, 7:01 pm

amother wrote:

I didn't blame the students. Just asked what to do now.
Can't give another test obviously.
Will attempt to prepare students better in the future.
Upset because they did well on previous test.

I just wanted to say thank you for not blaming the students and for trying to figure out how to do the right thing for them.