PDC 2 – a suggested approach

Assessment: preparing students for tests and exams (secondary)

This handout is designed to help you prepare your PDC session. You can use these materials in your PDC
groups if you think they are appropriate, or you can replace them with your own materials.

The comments in italics are a suggested approach for using the materials, for planning purposes only.
These comments are not intended to be shared with your PDC participants.

Review
Here is a suggested approach for the Review stage of your PDC.
Remind participants of the topic of the previous PDC meeting (Positive Discipline), and elicit some
examples.
In small groups ask participants to discuss the following focus questions:

● How did the children respond to the positive discipline approaches you tried?

● Which of the approaches you tried was the most successful? How do you feel it helped them?

● Was there anything that didn’t work as you had hoped that you would like to discuss with the
group?

Invite participants to share their thoughts with the whole group.

Review: Hopefully you allowed appropriate time in the Reflection stage of your last PDC for teachers to
discuss what specific change(s) they would make to their teaching in response to the input from PDC 1. If
so, the teachers should be able to answer the above questions.

Engage and Share

Introduce the topic of the PDC by writing the following the statement on the board:

School exams are memory tests. In the real world, no-one is going to stop you from
referring to a book or your smart phone to solve a problem.

1. Do you agree or disagree with this statement?

2. What is the purpose of formal tests and exams?
3. What are your beliefs about preparing learners for important tests and exams?

Engage and Share: it is important to create space for teachers to express their own opinions about
formal tests and exams. Regardless of the teachers’ feelings, it is inevitable that at least for the
foreseeable future, education systems all over the world will continue to use formal tests and exams to
measure learners’ progress. The best we can do is to, as far as possible, avoid negative backwash* of
testing on students learning. This PDC will focus on practical strategies teachers use to avoid negative
backwash.

*backwash is the influence that a test has on the way students are taught.

Reflect, Evaluate and APPLY

Here are some tips for developing students’ critical thinking skills and better preparing them for formal
tests and exams.

Put a tick in the first column next to any ideas you already do and a tick in the second column next to
any ideas you would like to try out with your students.

Tip I do this I will try this

1. Adapt test questions to make quizzes.

2. Use exit tickets to gauge the mood of the learners. At the end of
the class, ask them to write one thing they are confident about and
one thing they would like you to help them with.

3. Try ‘What is the question?’ game. Read out the answer to a test
question and ask learners to work in pairs to write the most
appropriate question for it.

4. Brainstorm and discuss strategies for self-study with the class.

Consider tips such as find a time and place to study, reviewing the
lesson every night, organizing notes, making study notes, using
useful apps and online materials.

5. Ask learners to write down two tips for studying / revising for
exams, then ask them to walk around to talk to different people and
share ideas.

6. Involve the learners in creating practice activities. E.g. for gap-fill

practice, put learners in groups of 3 or 4. Give each group a
paragraph or reading text and ask them to choose a number of
words to remove. Each group creates a gap-fill activity with the text.
Groups exchange papers.

7. Elicit strategies from the class by asking, ‘How do you do this type
of question?’ before showing them your strategies.

8. Always ask learners HOW they got their answers when doing
feedback.
 Other suggestions:

Reflect, Evaluate and APPLY: this is an opportunity for teachers to think about how they currently
support students to prepare them for tests or exams. Most of these strategies also develop students’
critical thinking skills and can be done at any time during the semester, not just in the lead up to a test.
This task could be done in small groups as a think, pair, share activity. Remember to encourage teachers
to share any additional ideas they have which have not been mentioned on the handout. They can record
these ideas in the ‘other suggestions’ box.

Also, allow sufficient time for teachers to talk about exactly which activity or activities they will try with
their learner, and give them time to work in small groups to plan the task or apply an idea to a specific
unit from the textbook. For example, if they want to try the ‘What is the question?’ tip, ask them to share
some examples of the ‘answers’ they will use, and encourage other teachers to provide feedback.