Yes, another quiz!
Frequent “low-stakes quizzes” have been found to increase students’ ability to retrieve prior learning from their memories. In addition to increasing students’ ability to retain and retrieve their math knowledge, some of the benefits include:
- giving students quick feedback allowing them to know how they are progressing in class
- building confidence - students are given multiple opportunities to succeed
- lowering stress - lower point levels have a smaller impact on student grades
While this strategy offers some clear advantages for our students, it can be challenging to implement. Common concerns include the time to write multiple assessments, increased time grading, and how to find the time to give retests. Here are how we have been able to work this strategy into our classrooms.
Middle School / Jane
We, a group of five seventh-grade math teachers along with a math interventionist, have created a list of skills needed by the end of 7th grade math. The students take a formative assessment (FA) after we have covered each of these skills - once or twice a week. They are given 3 chances for each skill. The FAs spiral: skills 1 and then 1,2 and then 1,2,3 and then 2,3,4 and then 3,4,5 etc. This lessens the pressure. If a student has shown mastery of a skill, they don’t need to take it again. This motivates some students to be careful on their FA. Students like this process so much that they will remind me if I have forgotten to give a FA. They feel that the FAs are an integral part of class versus something punitive. This also helps when we get to the summative assessment.
High School / Josie
I was able to try out this approach in an algebra one class unit on systems of equations. Much to my dismay, I found that many students were already having difficulty remembering how to graph linear equations. So I began writing and giving tri-weekly “quick quizzes” to the class. Each quiz had only two to three problems and was designed to take no more than 10 minutes of class time (often less) and be quick to grade.
I am thrilled to report that the overall student achievement as well as student engagement were very high in this unit. While many students’ groaned about the extra assessments, many agreed that taking the quizzes helped them to understand and do better on this unit. Based on this experience I plan to make up quizzes for some additional units next year.
How Can This Help You
If you don’t have the time or resources to develop multiple quizzes, start small. Pick one unit that your past students have struggled with and write two quizzes per week of that unit. You don’t have to commit to the whole year to try out this strategy. We have both seen positive results and hope that you will too!
See our references for further reading and the research behind this strategy and the resources page as possible sources for quiz questions.
Sources
Brown, P. C., Roediger III, H. L., & McDaniel, M. A. (2014). Make It Stick: The Science of
Successful Learning. Cambridge, Massachusetts: The Belknap Press of Harvard University
Press.
Frequent, Low-Stakes Grading: Assessment for Communication, Confidence. (2016, December 08).
Retrieved from https://www.facultyfocus.com/articles/educational-assessment/frequent-low- stakes-grading-assessment-for-communication-confidence/
Low-stakes testing. (n.d.). Retrieved from https://www.oswego.edu/celt/low-stakes-testing
Low-Stakes Assignments. (n.d.). Retrieved from https://resources.depaul.edu/teaching-commons/teaching-guides/feedback-grading/Pages/low-stakes-assignments.aspx
