Assessment Assignment Ashlie Carr

Question Break Down

100% 90% 80% % Answered Correctly 70% 60% 50% 40% 30% 20% 10% 0% 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 Question #

SMART Goal: By the end of the unit, 80% of the selected students not in the teacher education program will complete the Force, Motion and Energy test with at least 70% accuracy. SOL Addressed:
4.2 The student will investigate and understand characteristics and interactions of moving objects. Key concepts include a) motion is described by an objects direction and speed; b) changes in motion are related to force and mass; c) friction is a force that opposes motion; and d) moving objects have kinetic energy.

Results: The students I chose to take this test varied to the extremes for this assignment. Out of the ten participants, three of them were still in elementary school (only one has not ever seen the information before), 2 were in high school and the remaining 5 were adults (my fiance, sister, sisters boyfriend, mom and dad). One thing that definitely made a difference in the results of this study is that the majority of the participants havent seen or heard the information in a really

long time or ever. The content was hard for the people I chose, so I have to remember while analyzing the data that many of the answers were wrong just because it was a guess. With that being said, there were a couple questions that I found to be potential issues. The majority of incorrect answers were actually concentrated in the first four questions. After the participants completed the test, I asked them which questions were the hardest or which ones were hard to understand and most of the comments came from these first few questions. First of all, number one was a straight definition question. I thought this would be an easy question to answer considering the fact it is simply a definition, but even though my participants were not comfortable with the information, at first glance I felt like the wording was tricking them up. So, I then decided that the question is really straight forward and if the student were to have taken this test right after having a unit on this information as well as having terms with definition, this would be an easy question. I think I am just going to change the order of this question in the test. Instead of it being the first question, I will warm up the test with a more concept question instead of definition right to start off. The two that were incorrect on the second question were answered by the two younger students, so Im not so worried about that question because it is purely a definition question as well. If they dont know the types of energy, they wont know this question. That brings me to number 3. I got numerous comments on this question because of the wording and answer choices. Potentially, if the test taker thinks too much into the test, there could be more than one answer. Since the line is too close to call on this question, I will need to change the wording of the question to be more straight forward and I will also be changing the answer choices so I dont cause the student to struggle with two potential answers depending on the thought process.

Number 4 was the question that was missed the most. I asked my students why this question was so hard and the majority of them didnt know what a frame of reference was. Many of the incorrect answers came from not knowing the information. But, I was also asked about this question by almost all of the participants. They all struggled with what the question was asking. I am definitely going to work on this question. Obviously, it is hard if the students dont know the information, but it is clear that the wording of this question didnt help at all. I am going to do something much more concrete than a parking lot at Wal-Mart. Instead, Ill list a much clearer and simpler example. I am not testing to see how well the students know parking lots, I just need this question to test the students knowledge of frame of reference. The questions were missed from that point on by my youngest students, so I wasnt concerned until I reached question 16. Question 16 is checking for the understanding that smoother objects produce less friction, but ultimately I want to know if the student knows what objects have more friction. The answer choices were the area of confusion. I decided that Im going to just look over this question as a whole. I believe I am going to change the question completely to another question about friction completely. After re-reading this question, I decided that information wasnt really important. What is more important is that the student knows the difference between more/less friction and what causes more/less friction. So, I think Im going to completely change this question to a different aspect of friction.

Test Scores

1
100%-90%

89%-80% 79%-70% 69% or less

Overall, my test students didnt do too badly on the test for not being taught the information. 90% of my students passed the test with a 70% or above, so my SMART goal was met (The goal was 80% of students score 70% or above). In the end, two typos were brought to my attention also that I never caught. This experience was definitely an eye opening experience. In my mind, the test was simple and self-explanatory, but got all the information from the unit in to check for a broad amount of understanding. I will be spending some time re-wording and changing a few questions before assigning this test to real students. I also realized that the students got tripped up when they realized the last two questions were not multiple choice after the entire rest of the test was multiple choice. I thought about it and realized that there was no good reason why they couldnt be multiple choice also, so I will be making answer choices for the last two questions also. Im glad I did this assignment because I wouldnt have considered this a confusing test, but from a different perspective I can now see the weaknesses during some

points. I will now have a stronger, more efficient test once I take the advice of my students and do some revisions.