|
I hope you'll enjoy your student teaching, William -- sounds like you'll be a conscientious teacher!
I DEFINITELY feel that quality of assessment is far more important and telling than quantity of questions! In developing the questions for an assessment, I usually break down the subject matter first into main points, and determine how much emphasis (importance) should be given to each point. Then I start by taking the most important points, and planning on asking these points in a variety of ways: essay, multiple choice, matching, fill-in, serialization, or whatever. For the multiple choice questions, I simply restate the point, but remove a critical part of the statement. That part becomes one of the answer options, and you then create the "distractor" options by making variations & deviations from that part. Next, go to the essay or matching or some other section of the test, & either choose a term in your statement to be matched to its definition, or ask a short-answer or essay question that will enable a student to let you know whether they've got the gist of what you want them to know. It's time-consuming, but I enjoy making up assessments, and prefer my own to those available with the textbooks you're using. I like to add in a light-hearted distractor or 2 per page, to keep the test from being so "heavy" that it creates more anxiety than the students brought with them, too. Continue with your next most important points, & work down your list, reducing the number of times you "repeat" a topic as the points lose importance. (i.e., the most important point may be queried in multiple choice, matching, diagramming, and essay sections, while the least important points will only appear in one section.) Finally, hone down the test to an appropriate length, give yourself a break, and then take the test yourself as if you were a student. Now go back & create an answer sheet & appropriate weighting of the items based on how difficult you found each section to be.
Too wordy, and I can't remember now if I addressed your questions well, but best wishes!
|