Day 22: Quiz Day

Today was quiz day in College-Prep. In an effort to give students more immediate and meaningful feedback, I set up stations with the answer key and orange pens on the counter around the room. When students were finished with the quiz, they brought their quiz to a station to check their work against the key and use the orange pens to leave themselves feedback directly on the quiz. Then they handed the quiz in to me. What I like about this: students give themselves the feedback they need and I get to see what that feedback looks like.

(Originally, I put the answer key up on the projector and I went over the quiz with the class as a whole, and students had orange pens for feedback. That system was too inefficient, in my opinion. We had to wait until the last person finished, then we discussed each question as whole. Lots of wasted down time for some students.)

Update – Why Orange Pens? There’s nothing special about orange. Back when I first tried this out, I required students to make color-coded diagrams and graphs on their quizzes (red = force and acceleration, blue = position, black = objects, green = velocity) which meant I couldn’t have kids use any of those colors for self-feedback. I have since stopped requiring color-coding on quizzes (though we still do it on whiteboards and notes). Now I’d probably use green pens for feedback — easy contrast with original work in blue/black ink or pencil AND easy to buy in bulk.

Update 2013-10-25: Because of the way my classes are scheduled this year, I’m not setting up the answer keys in the back. Students take the quiz one day, then the next day and we go over the quiz on the overhead. Not totally efficient, but better than nothing. It also addresses some fears about potential cheating between students in different periods (e.g., a student in period 1 sees the answer key and then tells a student in period 9 what the answers are).