Exam Preparation Reflection

Last year I tried something new with my seniors.   A lot of my students(and I'm sure yours too) tend to not realize that their preparation for a test has a lot to do with the outcome.  So many seem to think that you are just born with math ability and that directly determines how well you end up doing on tests.  I wanted them to be able to reflect on how they prepared for an exam, and how that led to their grade.  I started crafting a project for my students to help with this.  I had the following goals:

1) Students who give 100% in every class and don't have to study much shouldn't be punished
2) Students should have the option of not doing anything at all.  The fact is some kids don't study, and I want them to be able to face it without punishing them further.
3) Students who work hard should be rewarded.
4) Students would be forced to think about how they prepared while seeing their exam grade.

So, I decided that for the project they would hand in all of the materials they used to study and write up a one paragraph explanation detailing exactly what they did.  I made it clear that if they wanted to they could hand in a paper that said "I didn't do anything to prepare" and it wouldn't be detrimental to their grade so long as they did well on their exam.  The worst grade they could get on their project was their exam grade but they could do better on their project if they prepared well.  I gave them the previous year's exam as practice and gave them some general suggestions on what they could do to best prepare.

I thought this would be a good reflection for my students and that they would learn a lot and it was, but it turned out that I learned from it too.  I had been under the assumption that some students studied well, but struggled on my tests and that other students didn't prepare at all, but ended up doing well.  To my surprise, students' grades lined up almost exactly with the way they prepared.

We spent the whole class on the Monday after exams reflecting on exam prep. I opened by having each student write down their answers to the questions below.

In preparing for your exam...

What did you do that worked?

What did you do that didn't work?

What could you have done better?

I handed back their graded exams and we went through the following stats one at a time(red results are from this year):

Class Average: 83% (83.9%)
Highest grade : 93% (99%)
Average of Students who didn't turn anything in: 72%
Average of Students who "looked over their notes": 74%
Average of students who didn't do any of the practice exam: 75%
Average of students who did the easy problems for them on the practice exam: 79% (76.8%)
Average of the students who did all of the hard parts of the practice exam: 87.4% (88.2%)
Average of students who identified and targeted what was difficult for them: 90% (97.25%)

Then we discussed the results and talked about effective studying.  We talked about how "looking over notes" didn't do much of anything, and how even doing problems that are easy for them didn't really do much either.  We talked about how the largest jump came from the people who made sure to figure out how to do the problems that were harder for them and practiced those problems.  We went over some highlights of the Sweeney Study Method and their answers to the questions from the beginning of class, then used the remaining time to start on test corrections.

Overall, I was really happy with the results of this project.  It forced my students to see how their study habits directly influence their exam grades, and was an interesting learning experience for me as well.  I'd really be interested in seeing results from other classes, so if you try something like this, make sure to let me know how it works out!

Selling study strategies (Math studying strategies pt. 1)

My school is very big on teaching kids strategies to help them succeed. This makes me happy because I feel that there are a lot of strategies for learning and test taking particularly in math that may have been obvious to me, but aren't obvious to many kids.  With my 9th and 10th graders, I focus mostly on how to effectively learn in class from your teacher and review strategies for test taking.  In 12th grade, I like to specifically take a decent chunk of time to model, explain and discuss how to learn and study from a math book.  I believe this is an essential skill as it is inevitable that at some point in college students are going to need to learn directly from the book.  This may be due to the fact that they didn’t understand the lesson, they misunderstood a portion of the lesson, or they missed a class entirely.  Surprisingly, many kids don't understand how to read from a math book or even how to study for math at all.  I feel certain that we have all had the experience of hearing a student say, "Well you can't really *study* for math..." or "I just look over my notes to study for a math test."

So, in my senior classes I take a chapter from one of our tests, and exclusively read through it together with the students.  We focus on figuring out what the book is saying, and how to organize and study the concepts in preparation for college courses.  I started this process today in class; and to be honest, we covered very little math material.  Nonetheless, I really believe that today was infinitely more important for them than any single math topic could ever be.

I'll talk about my specific process and strategies in upcoming posts, but I want to intentionally stop after I make my next point because it's very important:  I think many teachers go about teaching study skills in the wrong way.  There are a lot of great teachers out there providing countless useful studying strategies, and I'm not saying those strategies aren't equal to or more awesome than mine.  It's essentially the introduction that in my experience (as a student) needs improvement.

My selling of study strategies goes like this:

"Studying strategies are for people that don't want to study a lot! I promise you that at some point you're going to want to learn a lot about something in life whether you just have a strong interest in a topic, want to learn a specific skill, or just want to get a better grade in a college course.  I never liked studying. I wanted to spend my time going out with friends, playing video games, enjoying a nice sunny day, but definitely not studying! However, I still wanted to do well in my classes. What I realized is that if I used effective study strategies, then I really didn't have to study nearly as much in order to understand the material and be successful.  So again, good studying strategies are used because you don't want to spend that much of your time studying!"

At this point, I have their attention.  To really drive the point home, I give an example from my own experience.

"My first year in college I was in the First Year Science and Engineering dorm.  My floormates had mostly gotten 4.0's in high school, and there were a decent number of valedictorians.  With my mere 3.5, I was feeling a little intimidated.  Throughout the first semester I was always trying to get my friends to go out and do fun things, but was frequently met with "I've gotta study, you should try doing it sometime, Sweeney." This happened especially in the weeks leading up to exams. As the semester came to a close, a number of my friends were convinced I was going to fail.  What happened?  I was one of three people on my floor to make Deans list. (There was a dinner for us, so I knew).  I ended up doing better than a lot of intelligent classmates who had studied much more than I did.  Why?  I'm not a genius, and (as all of my students know at this point) I have a terrible memory!  The reason for my success was that I used effective study strategies and knew my strengths and weaknesses as a student when I did study."

I had pretty high hopes when I first decided to share this concept with my students a few years ago, and I wasn't disappointed.  They can't argue with the logic that good studying = less studying.  Many students just don't study. To me, it seems like if students feel they have to study a lot only to still maybe not do well, they're just going to choose to not study.  When I suddenly present this third option of studying not that much, but doing it really well it's effective enough to give me their attention and eager discussion of strategies for a few periods.  I can't be sure how much of the strategies we go over will stay with them, but at least I know for certain they're getting in there.