Tips for Creating and Scoring Essay Tests

Tips for Creating and Scoring Essay Tests Essay tests are useful for teachers when they want students to select, organize, analyze, synthesize, and/or evaluate information. In other words, they rely on the upper levels of Blooms Taxonomy. There are two types of essay questions: restricted and extended response. Restricted Response - These essay questions limit what the student will discuss in the essay based on the wording of the question. For example, State the main differences between John Adams and Thomas Jeffersons beliefs about federalism, is a restricted response. What the student is to write about has been expressed to them within the question.Extended Response - These allow students to select what they wish to include in order to answer the question. For example, In Of Mice and Men, was Georges killing of Lennie justified? Explain your answer. The student is given the overall topic, but they are free to use their own judgment and integrate outside information to help support their opinion. Student Skills Required for Essay Tests Before expecting students to perform well on either type of essay question, we must make sure that they have the required skills to excel. Following are four skills that students should have learned and practiced before taking essay exams: The ability to select appropriate material from the information learned in order to best answer the question.The ability to organize that material in an effective manner.The ability to show how ideas relate and interact in a specific context.The ability to write effectively in both sentences and paragraphs. Constructing an Effective Essay Question Following are a few tips to help in the construction of effective essay questions: Begin with the lesson objectives in mind. Make sure to know what you wish the student to show by answering the essay question.Decide if your goal requires a restricted or extended response. In general, if you wish to see if the student can synthesize and organize the information that they learned, then restricted response is the way to go. However, if you wish them to judge or evaluate something using the information taught during class, then you will want to use the extended response.If you are including more than one essay, be cognizant of time constraints. You do not want to punish students because they ran out of time on the test.Write the question in a novel or interesting manner to help motivate the student.State the number of points that the essay is worth. You can also provide them with a time guideline to help them as they work through the exam.If your essay item is part of a larger objective test, make sure that it is the last item on the exam. Scoring the Essay Item One of the downfalls of essay tests is that they lack in reliability. Even when teachers grade essays with a well-constructed rubric, subjective decisions are made. Therefore, it is important to try and be as reliable as possible when scoring your essay items. Here are a few tips to help improve reliability in grading: Determine whether you will use a holistic or analytic scoring system before you write your rubric. With the holistic grading system, you evaluate the answer as a whole, rating papers against each other. With the analytic system, you list specific pieces of information and award points for their inclusion.Prepare the essay rubric in advance. Determine what you are looking for and how many points you will be assigning for each aspect of the question.Avoid looking at names. Some teachers have students put numbers on their essays to try and help with this.Score one item at a time. This helps ensure that you use the same thinking and standards for all students.Avoid interruptions when scoring a specific question. Again, consistency will be increased if you grade the same item on all the papers in one sitting.If an important decision like an award or scholarship is based on the score for the essay, obtain two or more independent readers.Beware of negative influences that can affect essay s coring. These include handwriting and writing style bias, the length of the response, and the inclusion of irrelevant material. Review papers that are on the borderline a second time before assigning a final grade.

Fashion essays

Fashion essays The 1960s were the beginning of the new youth culture. Young people suddenly had power, they wanted to have a say on what was going on at that particular time. The best way to do this was through the music, hence the universal language. Music was used as a way to express emotions about everything, and to make political and other statements. Fashion reflected the music by making a statement and expressing personal opinions. The 1960s clothing styles developed along simpler, more youthful lines. It was the decade that had its own fashions directed specifically at teenagers. Before the 60s, teenagers dressed like their parents. The Mod movement of the early 1960s originated as such a youth subculture. However, by the mid 1960s it had evolved into a more generalized yet at the same time more outrageous form of fashion. It led to an explosion of the youth culture, which gave all teenagers a style of dress they could call their own. This style was very revolutionary but it eventually influenced the fashions of the entire decade for people of all ages, changing fashions from mass-market clothes all the way up to the haute couture industry. 1960s fashion became more youthful; they became simpler, shorter, and brighter.1 By the middle of the decade fashion was turned on its ear, as elements of styles initiated by the young permeated the clothing of all ages and all classes. Elements such as short skirts, brigh t colours, graphic patterns and unusual materials found their way into mainstream and haunt couture clothing. So, from a mainstream fashion that was fairly conservative we can identify a gradual change that continued until the mid 1960s, when it finally affected all areas of fashion. After all, young people were beginning to be a force to be reckoned with. This gradual change seemed to occur alongside the development of the music movement. The Beatles, Rolling Stones and Jimi...

Managerial economics individual work week 12 Essay

Managerial economics individual work week 12 - Essay Example However, saying that you will open a given type of business because you are good in one thing would be a myth. That is because they do not always lead to successful ventures as other factors such as demand, opportunities and resources also affect performance of the venture. It is a myth to say that the customer is always right. In as much as the customer may be right in how he or she feels, they are usually wrong on many occasions. Businesses just use the statement to bend to the customer’s demands. However, the best approach would be to win the customer over and try to convince them to make a purchase. Thinking that you can open a store, and people will walk, is a thought founded on a myth. For customers to visit a shop, they must first be aware of its existence. Therefore, one needs to create this awareness through marketing or advertising. Also, customers do not just walk in unless you have what they need. Coming up with an idea and concluding that everyone will love it forms a myth. An idea may be great, but not everyone will love it. An idea will succeed if it meets the needs of people and also if the timing is good. Everyone loves quality. However, it would be a myth to say that quality guarantees success. That is because apart from quality, success also requires other factors such as a good marketing strategy, pricing strategy and even good customer relations. It is a myth to say that more people increase the speed of a project. On the contrary, more people may slow down the project. A large number slows down decision making as there is need to consult every time. Also, there may be conflicts during execution as the people may have different ideas of how to carry out the execution. To say failure is bad would propagate a myth. Failure is not the opposite of success. In fact, it is one step towards success. Failure helps us learn our weaknesses and mistakes. It makes us reflect on our decisions that led to the failure. One can,