Dear colleague,
I've written before how low-stakes quizzes are a go-to lesson move in whatever courses I teach. (For that writing, see Chapter 3 of These 6 Things, specifically pp. 85-88, and Strategy #5 of The Will to Learn, “Feast of Knowledge,” and this article.)
Often times when I'm introducing this idea in a PD setting, I use this fun, clever “Tests are Magic” video from Benjamin Keep:
If it's my second PD visit to a school, I like to demo this idea by quizzing teachers on material we covered in my first visit (I've included some of these “quiz” slides below).
But during one PD visit recently, teachers may have taken away the wrong idea. Let's see what the school leader saw, and then I'll unpack the misunderstanding:
It's been about 6 weeks since your day at [our school]. I've been in a lot of meetings and a part of a lot of discussions where your book, keynote or something you said in a breakout is brought up or repeated. The feedback from the session was great and the conversations keep going.
The last few weeks I've walked through our high school on a Friday. (It's been a Friday simply because that's when it's worked out in my schedule to have a nice block of time to get in and out of classrooms.) I was in and out of 20 classrooms today and in every one students were taking a quiz or test. It was the same last week.
My worry is that when kids have all teachers in this cycle of testing on Friday that A) kids get overwhelmed with the studying on a Thursday night so they don't study for anything (and I mentioned Thursday night because I have teachers giving study guides, etc. the day before or B) just the test fatigue of class after class where a test, test, test.
So first of all, the leader is right — this IS a problem! The kind of effective testing that Benjamin Keep is speaking to isn't the study guide kind; it's the “quizzing is just a normal part of what we do” kind.
As I've described in this article, the quizzing I do in my class works in part because it's normal. Students don't have time or resources to “study” for these quizzes; the quizzes ARE THEIR OWN FORM of studying. And my students gain that understanding of quizzing = studying because:
- 1) I speak into it.
- 2) The quiz grade is just a classwork grade, and my classwork grades amount to 40% of a student's overall grade. And there are hundreds of points in the classwork category, so they come to see that quiz results don't really make or break your overall grade.
So the core misunderstanding that some teachers took away from my session was that they were mapping their own ideas of what a test is — study guides, students given a warning about the test and pressure to study for it — versus the FOR LEARNING nature of tests that Dr. Keep is referencing from the research on retrieval practice.
All of which is to say:
- Yes, it's smart to quiz students often on material you want them to remember.
- But also, you do need to be careful about how you present these quizzes and the degree to which they affect a student's overall grade.
Sharing in case it helps!
Teaching right beside you,
DSJR
Ann says
Thanks for sharing this, Dave! Around here we distinguish between formative assessment (ie. assessment FOR learning, including low-stakes quizzes) and summative assessment (ie. assessment OF learning, including major unit tests).
For years, I’ve been using daily quizzes into all my classes at the end of the block. I don’t always tell the students (at least not at first) that the quizzes are actually all for practice and don’t affect their marks, but I find them wildly helpful for me to get a sense of where students are struggling. (I hope it gives them similar insights about their own understanding, too!)
Just thought I’d share my approach in case it helps. 🙂
Dave Stuart Jr. says
Ann, thank you for sharing this!