Since 1973, the National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP) has gathered information about student achievement in mathematics. Results of these periodic assessments, produced in print and web-based formats, provide valuable information to a wide variety of audiences. They inform citizens about the nature of students' comprehension of the…

This study investigated language teaching strategies, as reported by teachers and students, and the effects of these strategies on students' motivation and English achievement. The participants consisted of 31 English as a foreign language (EFL) teachers and their students (N = 694) in Catalonia, Spain. The teachers and students rated the…

While today's curriculum is largely driven by standards, many teachers find the lack of specificity in the standards to be confounding and even intimidating. Now this practical book provides middle and high school teachers with explicit guidance on designing specific objectives and developing appropriate formative and summative assessments to…

Describes the structured overview, a chart that helps students associate known terms with new terms. Discusses a method of introducing the structured overview. The author then presents two exercises that reinforce learning of vocabulary and the relationship between key concepts: the scrambled overview and label-object matching. More advanced…

Essay questions have been a stable fixture of teacher assessment activity for decades. Assessment reforms of the early 90's encouraged the development and use of "newer" forms of assessment including portfolios, performance tasks, and authentic assessments. As of late, however, there appears to be a regressive emphasis toward the use of…

The USS Constitution, one of the original three frigates in the U.S. Navy, celebrated its 190th anniversary in 1987. To commemorate this event and to study the naval history of frigates, five exercises were created that detail the history and focus on the USS Constitution. The exercises begin with a fill-in-the-blank test that teaches students…

A model was developed to provide a uniform method for vocational and technical education content experts to develop test items (written questions and performance measures) that are congruous with course-level exit competencies. The model is essentially a closed-system approach in that specific action verbs must be identified and operationally…

Based on the classic test-wiseness principles of J. Millman, C. H. Bishop, and R. Ebel, the STAR strategy streamlines the taking of timed tests. Before explaining the strategy to students, the instructor can convince students of the advantages of the strategy by administering a short test to determine students' test-wiseness. The STAR strategy…

In this practical, easy-to-use guide, suggestions are made for setting educational objectives and preparing a teacher-made test. Specific suggestions are made for selecting items for essay tests, multiple choice tests, completion tests, matching tests, and true-false tests. (BW)

This "toolbox" offers suggestions about how and when to create objective tests. Such tests are sometimes a quick way to find out how students are doing, and sometimes they help students focus on what they are doing in class or help teachers define the content that is worth knowing. The following suggestions are offered for developing objective…

The first of three sequels to the booklet "Student Assessment," this booklet begins by describing and providing examples of four different forms that objective questions can take: (1) conventional multiple choice questions; (2) true/false questions; (3) assertion/reason items; and (4) matching items. Guidance is offered on how to decide which type…

In this objective scoring procedure for assessing learning-disabled students' writing, a standardized process is used to collect writing samples, which are then scored for number of legible words, total number of words written, percentage of legible words, correctly spelled words, number of correct word sequences, and mean length of correct word…

Procedures used by 55 faculty in the evaluation of students in various academic areas in Indiana University were studied. The majority of respondents taught undergraduates, were male, and were experienced, full-time faculty. Business faculty used primarily essay tests and research papers, while physical science faculty used mostly objective tests,…

This fastback concentrates on writing technically correct test items that are compatible with the teacher's instructional objectives. The introductory chapter touches on some of the problems associated with preparing classroom tests. The second chapter outlines five steps in preparing a test according to the "Plan-Write" System: (1) prepare a…

Biology 30 is a 12th-grade science course for students in Alberta, Canada. This document is a final test for the course. Intended for administration during June, 1988, it contains 80 multiple-choice questions and five written-response questions. Two-and-one-half hours are allowed for completing the test. No answer key is included since scoring is…