Our class spent some time recently studying political parties in class. I wanted to use the time to work on the content-area strategy of selectively highlighting. I decided that one of the ways I could get my students to be intelligent and selective in their highlighting was to explain to them that they would be given a timed, open-note quiz on the material later in the week.
Now, the questions were mostly literal comprehension and opinion questions written in a close format, so the difficulty level was not hard (see screenshot below of the completed quiz). But I wanted them to see that if they highlighted intelligently, then they wouldn't have to spend time re-reading the whole packet while completing the test. They could focus on their highlighted sections and find most of the answers right away! (Makes sense in theory, right?)
Now, the questions were mostly literal comprehension and opinion questions written in a close format, so the difficulty level was not hard (see screenshot below of the completed quiz). But I wanted them to see that if they highlighted intelligently, then they wouldn't have to spend time re-reading the whole packet while completing the test. They could focus on their highlighted sections and find most of the answers right away! (Makes sense in theory, right?)
One of the completed online quizzes.
I created the quiz online, on my students e-Portfolios. I typed up all the questions, copied them onto each child's blog, and saved it in their Drafts folder. When it was time to take the quiz, I had all of my students sign in, access their e-Portfolios, edit the draft I created, and type in their answers. When they were done, they published it live and the rest is history! I now can spend an hour or two grading this quiz on my couch and see how the kiddos did!
Of course, my main purpose for doing this was to help my students learn the content-reading strategy of proper highlighting, but we also ended up with some nice reflection statements out of the activity as well! Check out some more of their answers by hovering over the e-Portfolio tab above and clicking on one of the 25 e-Portfolio links if you'd like!
Disclaimer: I'm not sure if others would worry about privacy concerns. I'm not worried about it because:
- I called it a quiz to the kids, but it's really no more than a worksheet,
- their grades are not public, and
- if they'd like, they can edit it at any time from home. :)