Tim wr0te that he had to weigh his summative assessments at 50% and was asking for some suggestions on how to do that in a CI format. Here is my response:
Tim I am thinking that you have a perfect opportunity here to do the summative assessments (I would assume two per year) in the form of stories. Doing that fits every requirement you describe above.
Plus, with that exam day at 50% of their grade you could have a field day reminding them maybe once a week during the school year: “Hey guys, how are you going to do on the final if what we are doing now IS the final exam format?”
What I would suggest is to create a story in each class the day before the final exam period, which I am assuming is from two to three hours. Then, during the exam period, you can do this:
Having made sure that you got the story done in the class prior to the exam period, because you need to have the story ready to project at the start of class during the long exam period:
1. Project the story. Now during the first part of the exam period you can change anything you want and generally banter back and forth with the kids, negotiating meaning with them. That could take from 30 min. up to an hour.
2. After you have the story finished, and the artists feel that their drawing of it is ready, and if you use a quiz writer they have their quiz ready for you (obviously there is no need for a story writer now because they gave you that in the class before the exam), you can go through the Reading Options (formerly Reading Option A). You can literally spend well over two hours and thus the rest of the three hour exam period doing this work with reading, there is so much to do in each of those 22 reading options. You would have to watch the clock during this reading time to leave about 45 min. for the actual “exam” part of the exam.
3. Now the actual exam can happen in the remaining time. I don’t think you would need an hour, and perhaps 30 min. is too little time. Maybe 45 min. is what you will need. The actual exam:
1. Of course, either you, before the exam period, or the quiz writer, if you use one (I don’t anymore bc a good quiz writer seems hard to find these days), will have come up with a good 10 question yes/no quick quiz as usual. Or you could make it 15 or 20 if you feel guilty because it’s summative. Give the quiz. 10-15 min. tops.
2. Project the story in the form it ended up in. They do a written translation of it into L1, leaving blanks/drawing a clear line where they don’t understand something. It will take you all of a few minutes to grade an entire set of exams because all you have to do is make sure they could retell the story in written form. Literally, I can grade one of these translations in about 5 seconds. Piece of cake for anyone who stayed conscious during the two exam periods and so most kids, since I always use a 10 scale, get 8 or above.
If you have gotten enough reps on the facts of the story, and you certainly will have given the total of up to three hours or more before the actual exam – and the kids will be locked and loaded on the facts at this point because what is going to happen then is 50% of their grade – the kids will all score high and that is our purpose in this work, and not to tear them down because they can’t memorize something.
If you are not using the old TPRS format based on target structures but class-created images, you will probably have A’s from all the kids, because they will have learned it all, because, as happened with my kids in India, they forgot it was even an exam.
I like this plan for a summative exam because it is such a shame to have a “dead” exam period where no fun CI happens, because when CI isn’t happening – when you are “testing” (which is such a bullshit word) – no gains are happening and what a shame to waste all those precious CI minutes.