Practical Advice for Your Student - Part 3 - Test Taking

In spite of the grade controversies you might see on Twitter, tests are an important part of learning.  It is important for a teacher to know if students have knowledge or can perform a skill on their own without teacher support.  They also provide an opportunity for retrieval practice, and important part of solidying memories.  

That's not to say they cannot be improved.  It would take too long to grade and give feedback for every question to be free response, especially for those teachers who have classes of up to 35 students.  So we are left with things like matching, multiple choice, fill in the blank, etc. for the sake of efficiency.  Much of the test taking advice you see online (like choose C because it is the most common right answer - which isn't even true anymore) are for those who don't have a clue about the right answer.  If you have studied, it is unlikely that you don't know anything at all.  So the advice in this post is for the conscientious student who prepared for the test.

Multiple Choice Questions

When I met with students, I asked them if they were the kind of person who quickly picked an answer and moved on or if the kind who talked themselves into every answer.  For both, I first offer this advice.  Bring a blank index card (you can also use a cover sheet if provided or even your hand) to cover the choices.  Read the question first and think of the answer in your mind.  Then, go look for the right answer.  The only type of question this won't work for are those where "all of the above" is the right answer, but there are usually only 1 or 2 of those on any given test.  For those who tend to talk themselves into the other choices, they don't even have to look at the others (maybe jump down to quickly to make sure "all of the above" isn't a choice).  For those who choose answers quickly, they will at least be more likely to be committing themselves to the right answer.

If, when you thought of then answer, you had some doubts, you can then go to look at the choices.  My next best advice is to cross out those you know to be wrong.  Then, go on to another question.  When you return to the one you had doubts about, you may find that your mind has continued in diffuse mode, allowing you to be confident about one of the answers you have left.

Short Answer Questions

It is easy to write something without really thinking about it.  I can't tell you how many times I have written next to an answer, "Read this out loud.  You'll hear that it doesn't make sense."  That's not me being mean; it's just easy to write without checking to see if it says what you meant.  You obviously can read your answers out loud during a test with other students around.  However, you can do two things.  First, you can do what I call "Reading out loud in your head." What I mean by that is rather than passively taking the words into your eyes, be intentional about "pronouncing" the words in your mind.  I think it is called "self talk," and it helps.  The other thing you can try is to ask the teacher if you can step into the hall and actually read the answer out loud so you can hear it.  I wouldn't do it a lot, but it could help if you are really stuck on a question.

The Order of the Test

Because we number the questions, students assume they must start with question 1 and go in order.  The problem with that is that the most challenging questions are often on the last page.  Because of the benefits of moving from focused node to diffuse mode, the best advice is to start with the hardest ones. Recognize when it is time to pause and go on to some easier questions, so you can return to them after your brain has had time for active recovery.  The other benefits to doing it this way are that you are able to time your pace better when the easier ones are the ones that are left and you don't already have an exhausted brain when your reach the free response section.

Practical Advice for Your Student - Part 1 - Note Taking

After I began attending Learning and the Brain conferences in 2018, one of my favorite things to do was have individual conferences with students who were not performing as well on tests as they would like.  I knew that I had advice that could help them because of what I had learned about cognitive science and memory.

I started by asking them how they currently study.  Their number one answer was, "I look over my notes."  I asked them what that meant, and it was clear why their study habits were ineffective.  They were basically re-reading the words they had copied from the wall with no context or processing.  For a couple of years, I gave them better advice about studying for tests.  

Then, I realized I needed to start expanding these conversations.  We discussed, first, what they were doing in class while learning.  I then addressed more effective study techniques.  Then, finally, we talked about how to deal with questions during the test.  

So, that's what I will do with this blog as well.  We'll start with note taking.  Students tend to fall into one of two extremes.

1. Note taking is not only copying what is on the board.  Before I had a textbook, my students had to rely on their notes.  Parents would come to conferences and say, "We don't know how to help because we can interpret his notes."  I would look at them and find that they had copied the words from the slides and nothing else.  Literally nothing else.  No examples.  No practice problems.  No thoughts of their own.  It needs to be more than that.  What is projected on the wall or written on the board is an outline at best, not the only things that are important from the lesson.
2. Note taking is not a class transcript.  The other extreme is when students become court stenographers, attempting to write down every word that is said in class.  This is more likely to happen when they are taking notes by typing on a laptop because it allows them to gain speed.  But, it also shuts off any processing of the information through their brain.  By writing more, they think about it less.  This is what leads some to believe that taking notes by typing is ineffective.  It's not the typing that causes the problem; it's the lack of thinking.  When taking notes by hand, we usually summarize what we hear to save time.  It's that summarizing that is helpful.
3. Notes should be a collaboration of brains.  So what notes should be then?  Well, as I already mentioned, they should be a summary of what happened in the lesson, not just what was projected but also the important parts of what was said.  This takes practice because students have a hard time identifying what was important.  (By the way, for some good advice in this area, see Daniel Willingham's great book Outsmart Your Brain.). They should also involve thoughts from the student himself.  It's probable that he thought of something while the teacher was explaining that would be useful to his memory later on.  The purpose of note taking isn't to have notes.  The purpose of note taking is to jog ones memory later, so write down anything that will be likely to help with that.  
4. Notes are for the student.  The important thing to remember is to write down what will help YOU to remember.  Notes aren't for the teacher or for your parents.  They are for the student to have a memory aid for what happened in class.  This is frustrating for parents who want to help their student study.  They want to be able to pick up the notes and make sense of them.  But they weren't in class, so it won't help them remember what happened in class.  The best thing a parent can do with their child's notes in helping them study is point to something and say, "Tell me about this."  The child should be able to look at that note and retrieve an episodic memory from that day's lesson.  If they can, these are good notes, no matter what they look like.  Conversely, if they can't, these are not good notes.

It's tempting to ask the teacher to provide a crutch for students who aren't yet good at this.  Some teachers provide a fill in the blank sheet of notes.  Run away from these!  That means the teacher did the summarizing (so she'll remember, but you won't).  It also means students only stay engaged for long enough to fill in the word.  Then, they check out for the next word.  Students, I implore you to take your own notes.  Don't do group notes with your friends on a google doc.  Don't borrow someone else notes (unless you were absent or looking to see if your own notes are missing something).  I know it takes more work, but if you care about learning, it is the only way.

Student Meetings

Instead of lunch and planning periods this week, I've been holding one on one meetings with some of my 8th-grade students.  So far, I've met with seven students (and a mom).  I have four meetings scheduled for next week.  No one is in trouble.  No one has done anything wrong.  These meetings are about preparing for tests.  

At GRACE, the 8th-grade team understands that our responsibility is to meet kids where they are and get them ready for where they are going.  This is, of course, true for teachers of every grade.  The first grade team is preparing kids for second grade.  But there is something that most students and parents understand about the eighth grade - high school is next.  The curriculum in 8th grade assumes a fair amount of foundational knowledge, and it is now time to learn analytical skills.  Students are no longer only learning the name of a family on the periodic table; they need to know how to use the periodic table to calculate how many neutrons are in the atom of an element in that family and how many valence electrons it has.  This requires more than the flashcards that they have been so dutifully making all these years.  It means that note-taking can't mean copying what the teacher projects from their PowerPoint presentation.  It means dropping most of the little tricks our older siblings have passed down (like choosing all of the above because it's only a choice if it's right - I will break them of this belief).

I spend a fair amount of classtime talking to them about why retrieval is superior to rereading and how to prepare for different levels of thinking-level questions.  I try to prepare them for the fact that they will have to change some of the habits that have led to their prior success, but they often just don't believe me.  Until it is real, I'm just saying stuff teachers say. Then, a student who is accustomed to As makes a B- or a C+ and they want to know what they can do.  While they mean extra credit, I bring them in and talk to them about how they currently study and how they might modify that to be more successful with tests that inlcude higher level thinking.  I divide it into three sections of advice - in class, studying, and test taking.  Let me share some of that with you.

In Class -  I work in a one to one laptop school, so there are plenty of ways to be distracted, but that isn't new.  Students have always found things to distract them in class.  I watched a student read her pencil once just to avoid doing what she should have been doing.  When I speak students about learning, we start there.  First, if your computer is distracting you, feel free to take your notes by hand.  

Then we talk about notes.  Most students fall into one of two extremes - they either write down almost nothing or they attempt to write down everything.  Neither of those is conducive to good learning.  Note taking involves paying close attention and making decisions about what is important to write down, which is not the same for every student.  In a class like mine, where the book is very closely aligned with what we are doing in class, it may be better to think of notes as a map, pointing to the information you need to study and supplementing with a few things from class.  Students have grown accustomed to copying the power point presentation and are surprised when I say, "Oh, that's just to remind me of what to talk about next or to give you a visual aid.  Unless I tell you that you need to copy a slide, you probably don't need to."  (There is a technique I'm afraid to experiment with called "retrieve taking."  In this technique, students to not write anything down during the class period.  You give them five minute at the end to write down everything they can remember.  I want to try it, but I'm a little afraid that I would have a hard time justifying it if it didn't work.). 

We also talk about asking and answering questions as a way of remaining engaged rather than just letting the class wash over you.

Studying - This is the longest part of the conversation and the one with the most research based support.  I start by asking them what they currently do to study.  By far, the most common answer I get is, "I look over my notes."  After asking them what they mean by that, it is clear they do not know that study is a verb.  They are re-reading notes that don't accurately represent what they did in class and hoping that will be enough to have it stuck in their heads.  We talk about why that is not helpful for their memory.  I ask them if they have ever memorized lines for a play; you don't learn your lines by reading the play again.  You learn them by trying to remembre them, crashing and burning, and trying again.  We talk about flashcards and making a list of questions for yourself and brain dumps a number of other retrieval strategies.  

For higher level thinking questions, flashcards may not be your best tool, so we talk about that too.  How might you "think outside the book" and prepare for questions that require using the knowledge they have gained from their flashcards.  How might you write yourself a question that is similar to one we have gone over in class?  What skills might you need to employ that would help?  This, again, requires that you have been engaged in class.  Learning is a complex activity, and it requires your full attention.  

Test Taking - About three-fourths of the students I meet with identify themselves as people with test anxiety.  I don't say identify themselves as a way of criticizing them; I think we all have at least a little bit of test anxiety, and it is not really a diagnosable condition.  We talk a little about taking the time to breath or pray or count to ten or whatever it takes to calm you rather than trying to ignore your feelings and power through.  And then I give them what I think is a simple but powerful piece of advice.  Cover up your test with a piece of paper.  It keeps you from seeing how much you have left to do and allows you to focus on the question you are currently on.  Most students with anxiety are also prone to talking themselves into all of the choices, so I tell them to cover the choices with the paper, read the question and think of the answer in their mind first; then just go look for that answer.  The only questions that doesn't work for are ones where the answer is "all of the above," but that's usually only one or two per test.  It's worth the trade.  These students are also generally prone to changing their answers while going over their test after they finish.  All of the research I've read says this is a bad idea.  I can't remember the exact number, but it was much more likely that students who have prepared well would change from a right answer to a wrong answer (or from one wrong answer to a different wrong answer).  It is rare that they change from a wrong answer to a right one.  If you have prepared well, trust yourself.

I want my students to be successful in all of their subjects, not just mine.  None of this advice is specific to my class or to the 8th grade.  If they actually absorb this, it should serve them well for years.

Cost Benefit Analysis - Teaching Techniques

If you are a teacher, there is a ton of advice out there about how to do your job better.  While that is a good thing, it is also a daunting thing.  Most of the advice is contradictory because many people write books out of their own philosophy, not out of the results of research.  Some of them try to make you feel guilty for having a different philosophy than that of the author.  Just put those books down.  There is no technique good enough to put yourself through a guilt-inducing book from an arrogant author.  

Even if we filter out all of that and focus only on the good books by authors who care about research, there is still an overwhelming amount of information and advice.  You can't go into your classroom on Tuesday and completely turn your practice upside down to match the book you just read.  Change has to be incremental to be sustainable or even possible.  So, this is a little meta, but I'm going to give you advice about advice to help you sort through all of the advice.

1. Let me shamelessly rip off two quotes from friends of mine.  Andrew Watson opens every session with "Don't do this thing.  Think this way."  He will tell you that knowledge of working memory or growth mindset or any other piece of research will look different in your classroom than it does in the classroom next door.  The researcher had a very specific methodology that you may or may not be able to do, so allow the knowledge to guide your thinking rather than dictate your actions.  Similarly, John Almarode ends his presentations with, "Don't adopt.  Adapt to your context."  In the same way as Andrew, he is telling his audience that they can't just drop a technique and hope for the best.  The way you implement a new technique will be different if you are a high school science teacher than if you were a 3rd-grade Spanish teacher.  So when you read a book, an article, or a blog post, figure out the deeper meaning behind the technique and use your professional judgment to choose the implementation of the idea.
2. Only fix what is broken.  It can be so easy to sit in a professional development session and feel bad about yourself.  If you don't do the thing that is being presented, you may feel like a bad teacher.  Yet, you know that a lot of what you do works.  You have students who learn concepts, develop skills, pass your tests, perform well on AP tests, and succeed in college; so lighten up on yourself.  You also know you have room for growth because everyone does (and you are part of everyone).  Look at your yearly map.  What is the one concept you have trouble explaining clearly or that your kids struggle with most?  Is there a way to approach that differently?  Then, address that one thing this year.  You don't want to throw the baby out with the bathwater just because you attended a conference.
3. Some techniques are complex, and they don't work if you don't implement them fully.  It's okay to choose not to use those, but if you only implement the easy parts, don't then blame the technique if it doesn't produce results.  You may have seen recently, for example, some negative feedback about growth-mindset in online conversations.  Schools who were attempting to implement it were not finding the results they felt Carol Dweck had promised.  When looking deeper, however, what happened was that some teachers were introducing it on the first day of school and then never doing any of it again or hanging posters about learning from mistakes but then speaking as people with fixed mindsets.  After a 20 minute seminar, they took away, "Sure, I can tell kids they aren't good at math YET" but didn't take the time to recognize that there is more to it than that.  It's not the fault of the researcher that we apply only a tiny part of a complex practice.  When choosing a technique, take the time to find out if it is okay to pick and choose parts or not.
4. Now, you are ready to choose a technique, guided by the input you just received from a speaker, a book, or a podcast.  How do you choose?  I'm going to suggest that you do a little cost/benefit analysis.  Some techniques are difficult or time intensive to implement.  Not everything that takes a long time to develop or implement is worth the time you put into it, but some things are.  Look at the breadth and depth of the outcome.  If the technique can be used for multiple chapters with the results you want, then it might be worth investing the time it takes to do it.  If there is a technique that takes very little time to implement, try it because any benefit you get out of it will be a good return on that small amount of time.  For example, I recently read a blog post about framing your objectives as questions instead of statements (I would cite this, but I read so many things that I have forgotten the source - like the Learning and the Brain website).  According to the post, evidence shows that students have more sustained attention and slightly better test scores when the objective is presented as something to explore.  This takes me ZERO time to implement because I was already writing the objective on the board, so now I write it as a question rather than a statement.  If there is any result at all, I am looking at an infinite benefit-to-cost ratio.  

Don't be afraid to tweak or drop something that isn't working.  Not all techniques are for everyone.  Even the best technique is not the best match for every class.  Teachers are humans and are able to do some things better than others.  Choose those that will work for your class, with your philosophy, based on your goals.  The science of learning is not meant to prescribe what every teacher must do.  It is meant to give you knowledge of the impact of a variety of strategies so that you can choose what matches you and your classroom goals.  Some may work exactly the way they did in the experiment; some may need a little adjustment to adapt it to your environment.  Some may just not be a good fit for you, and that is okay.

What Did You Wish You Had Known?

An educational communicator recently tweeted that he was going to talk to teachers who were about to graduate and asked veteran teachers to reply with what they wished they had known when they were starting out.  While it would overwhelm a new teacher to take in all the years of wisdom and hard-earned professional judgment in those replies, it did make me think how good a book that would make, a little like Harry Wong's The First Days of School, except not exclusive to classroom management techniques.  Someone should do that, but it isn't going to be me, so I'm going to put my two cents here.  Teachers getting ready to start your careers, use it as you will.  

Choosing the Job - You are entering the workforce during a teacher shortage.  That's probably scary, but it also presents an exciting opportunity.  It means you have more options than you might have in other years.  It means you can choose the environment in which you want to work.  When you go in for an interview, don't be afraid to ask if you can spend a day observing classes and chatting with teachers.  See if they'll let you attend a faculty meeting.  Listen to the way the staff interacts with students and with each other.  Listen to the way they talk about their administration.  You want to work in a helpful and joyful school, and that can be hard to know from the interview alone.

Setting Up - If you plan to teach in middle or high school, you aren't going to be much older than your first set of students, so you should do some things to establish authority.  I don't mean that you should go in demanding, mean, or strict.  I do mean that you should communicate the confidence of a person in charge.  Focus on projecting yourself as someone credible and worthy of respect rather than merely likable.  Hang your diploma and teaching certificate behind your desk just like you would expect a doctor, lawyer, or other professional to do.  Post your rules (call them expectations if it makes you feel better).  Communicate your passion for your subject.  It makes kids feel secure if you act like you are confident in your abilities. 

Lesson Planning - I'm going to tell you a secret.  You will never again write a lesson plan as long and detailed as those you wrote for your college methods classes.  That exercise was important to helping you think methodically about your lessons, but all you really need to have is a clear objective, the activities you need to accomplish that objective, and the way you will know when you have accomplished it.  You don't know how long things will take.  I remember planning what I thought was a class period length lesson.  Sometimes, it only took twenty minutes, so you should have some meaningful backup activities (retrieval practice would be my advice - See the book Powerful Teachingˆ by Pooja Agarwal if you don't already know it).  Sometimes, it would take three days.  It will take at least two years before you develop an intuitive feel for how long things take, and that's okay.

Find Some Mentors - You will probably be assigned a mentor by your school.  If you bond with them and they give you valuable advice, that's awesome.  You should also find some teachers with whom relationships develop organically.  You will need advice about replying to a parent's email, dealing with a difficult student, whether it is appropriate to offer extra credit or allow a student to retake a test, to talk through a project idea, to cry with on bad days, and to share your victories with.  I've been teaching for 23 years, and I still need to talk about those things with other teachers.  Find the ones who will tell you the truth and help you figure out your own philosophy (the one they had you write in college was idealistic and didn't cover the details).  Your formal mentor may be helpful, but the teacher next door will be a longer, better source of help.  Asking for help does not make you look weak; it makes you look like a professional who wants to grow in your job, but it is important to find the right people to ask.  If someone starts being a cynical influence, look for someone else.  (This is also true of teachers you find online.  There is a lot of good out there, but there is also a lot of toxicity.  Avoid the cynics, especially right now.)

Figure Out What Can Be Cut - There's a lot to cover in every curriculum, and you will have a time every semester when you realize you cannot cover it all.  Instead of attempting to rush through all of it,  choose to cover fewer things well.  You can choose the things you find the most inspirational, the things that are most foundational to the next level (ask the next level's teachers), or the things you think your students will most enjoy.  You can make that decision differently each year.  There are so many things I tired to fit in the first year I taught physics that I don't bother with now because they just weren't needed.  

Light Days - There are going to be some days when you are just too exhausted to be on top of your game.  Some teachers will advise you to take the day off when that happens.  That might work for you, but it doesn't work for me.  In my experience, writing sub plans is actually harder than being at school.  What you want are a few high-quality class-period-length videos that match your subject (You can find them on YouTube for free).  You are not dropping the ball or being lazy.  You are taking some stress off of your students, allowing them to hear quality material from another source, and giving yourself a chance to catch up on grading and lesson plans.  Have them turn in notes and give them a completion grade for it.  You shouldn't do it often, but if you need it once or twice a semester, don't feel bad about it.

There are many more things I could share here, but the first year is a swirl of advice that's hard to absorb.  Hang in there.  Learn a lot.  Adapt as needed.  You will feel much better after the first year and will really find your groove in year three.  That's when you will want to start taking on clubs, suggesting new classes, or coaching something, but for that first year, just focus on your learning how to be your best self for your students.