Quick quizzes are easy, short, true/false questions (five or ten or however many you want). If you are pressed for time ask five and double the score. The questions are written during the story by your quiz writer.
Don’t forget to ask yes/no or true/false questions. Ask “Did Sarah go to New York?” Do not ask “Who went to New York?” because then you have to think when you grade them.
When I began telling stories with the Invisibles, I found that the quick quizzes were not as needed because students were paying much closer attention to the stories of their creations’ adventures. Thus, I had largely abandoned quick quizzes when one day a teacher wrote this here on the PLC:
“The simple practice of giving quizzes had created a gap between my students and me. What I realized is that I was kind of doing it as a ‘pay back’ for those students who got distracted (by their difficult lives) somewhere along the lines of our story. My hope was that the quiz would remind them how important it is to pay attention in class, in reality it was a kind of passive-aggressive act of revenge on my part.”
I do not believe that Lori’s words are overstated. I believe that they are very true. Each teacher would do well to reflect on what Lori has said before truly calling themselves teachers and not just “deliverers-of-instructional-services” and “collectors of data.”
Lori continued:
“My students seem to feel a bit betrayed when we’ve had a good time together in class, laughing and creating a story, and then when I announce, ‘Una prueba, clase!’ they look a little forlorn as they get out their pencils and switch to ‘regular school’ mode.
“I’ve just decided that quizzes aren’t that important! I’m sure I can come up with a more relational way to invite the daydreamers back into our story-telling party.”
But we need the grades! So how about this plan? To avoid this forlorn feeling after the “story-telling party,” some teachers do a “non-written quiz.” This is a nice wrap- up activity and a nifty formative assessment. It is not a graded activity. It is more like a class closure activity and thus is valuable when being observed by administrators and on any day when an easy and stress-free wrap-up of the day’s story is desired. How does it work?
The teacher says each question twice while the students listen. The first time, the students simply listen and think what the answer is. The second time they hear the question, the whole class calls out the one-word answer together. A strong response indicates strong average comprehension. The teacher then repeats the answer in a complete sentence and moves on.
When the class leaves the room after a rousing chorus of correct yes and no answers, their confidence goes up. Then after class I just throw grades into the book that are consistent with what I saw the kids do in class. I haven’t been caught yet by people objecting to the lack of scientific data collection. But that doesn’t matter because I don’t care. Testing is a waste of time in an Invisibles classroom. Anyone can look and see that each kid is involved and learning, usually to their utmost capacity.
Whether you do written, non-written, or no quick quiz is, of course, a matter of your own personal and professional preference. We all must make our own decisions in how to apply the principles of second language acquisition in our classrooms. And as long as we are not forcing students to analyze and produce slices of language, we are aligning with the research.