Test and Essay Items

I wanted to steer clear of the true/false item just because of the 50% chance of having the students get the answers right, even if they didn’t know the subject that they were being tested on adequately. I am really getting the hang of writing test items better, (I hope) and I wished I had used better examples in my outcomes, now that I DO know better.

Essay Item:    

After the reading of Samuel Clemen’s (Mark Twain) autobiography, imagine what type of letter you would write to him, and be specific in regard to the politics of his time, and tell him what achievements have been made in the 21^st century in regard to civil rights and politics.

 

In explaining my thought process and rationale behind these tests, as suggested in Chapter 8, I wanted to compare and contrast the current political and racial climate of our time to the climate of Mark Twain’s. He was a wonderful humorist who wanted his autobiography to be published 100 years after he died. I suppose there was a reason for this, and the students’ finding comparisons and contrasts would be beneficial to their understanding in regard to Mr. Twain’s reasoning for this publication to happen one century later.

With the test items, I found it kind of hard to define these with the outcomes that I had written for last week. Now that I know better, and understand further on how to develop these outcomes, I would hope that my test items will reflect the knowledge that I have now. I hope this makes sense.