HEATHER
MIGDON
Diary #8
Teacher's
Quiz
While grading a mid-chapter math quiz at Starbucks this weekend, I came to a quite depressing conclusion: Either I am a horrible teacher, or my kids are unusually dim-witted. Or worse—both are true. Yikes.
As I flipped through the geometry quizzes, the mistakes were glaring and unavoidable. They weren't labeling the angles correctly, and some were even confusing lines with line segments. Almost everyone confused complementary with supplementary, and some could not guess at the meaning of either term. Did I teach them nothing over the past two weeks in math? The quiz scores were a shock to me. I thought the class was progressing nicely, and I imagined that we would complete our geometry unit in another week. I didn't predict that quizzes would send me back to the drawing board. I did not want to admit it to my latte-sipping friend sitting across from me, but I was angry at my students. How dare they mislead me into thinking that they understand something, only to prove to me that they don't! And how bad a teacher am I—creative lesson plans and appealing to different modalities had done nothing for me or my kids, it seemed.Chunks of understanding
But as I examined the quizzes more carefully, I began to see something different. While none of the quizzes was perfect by far, I could see chunks of understanding in all of their papers. Most knew to name a line with two points, even if they forgot to put the little line above the two letters. Several students correctly identified collinear points. Maybe the geometry lessons were not a waste after all.
I decided I needed an additional assessment aid. I would compile a checklist of geometry skills I needed them to have by the end of the unit. Then I would check off next to a student's name when I observed him or him applying the skill correctly. I would observe formally and informally, so that my students who freeze in test situations would not be at a disadvantage. By concentrating on what my students knew rather than what they did not know, I was able to use the quiz for what it was meant to be used for—a formative assessment designed to inform the rest of my geometry instruction. I have worked in to this week's math lessons several of the skills that many students appeared to be lacking on the quiz, and I have dedicated myself to being more diligent about making informal observations during independent practice. Sometimes it is necessary to change your outlook. Because, in truth, my students are not stupid and I am not a bad teacher.
