Student Choice on High School Chemistry Assessments
Student choice is something that I’ve been striving to implement into my high school chemistry and AP Chemistry classes. While I can’t let students just pick any old chemical they want from the store room and let them have at it, I can implement small changes that allow for more student choice. In this post, I’m going to focus on student choice on chemistry tests and quizzes. While this will be the focus of this blog post, I will be writing in the future about how to add choice with labs. If you’re ready to add more student choice to your chemistry classes, read on for details!
If you’re looking to add choice to quizzes, this style could work for you. The basic idea is that you make the quiz worth a certain number of points. 12 points total is common, but I have used 24 points for this style of quiz. From there, you develop questions worth varying point values.
In this example of a net ionic equations quiz, I created the following questions:
4 questions worth 4 points each
4 questions worth 6 points each
3 questions worth 8 points each
The 4 point questions were the least complex, and complexity increased as the point value increased.
Students were instructed to complete a number of problems so that they got a total of 24 points. No more, no less. A student could choose to complete the 3 questions for 8 points each. If they went this route, they would have more complex questions, but would have to complete fewer of them. If they didn’t go this route, they would have to mix and match from the questions worth fewer points. So even if they wanted to complete all 4 questions worth 4 points, they’d only get to 16 points. Which means they’d also have to complete an 8 point question to get all 24 points required. This ensures a student cannot compete just the easiest questions, and that they’d have a bit of stretch as well since they’d have to complete at least one at a higher DOK or complexity.
Student Feedback
The first time I used this format for a quiz, I asked students to write down what they liked about this format or what they didn’t like. An overwhelming majority were highly appreciative of this format. Most of the responses focused on the ability to show what they know by choosing which questions they answered, and reported that it was less stressful. I think I literally had one student who didn’t like this format of quiz. Based on this feedback, I have implemented this style of quiz a few more times. I have every intention of implementing similar strategies more frequently in future assessments.
Student Choice on Tests
I am slowly trying to add more options to unit tests and assessments as well. In this case, I haven’t asked students to reach a certain point value. Instead, a section of a test might have multiple options and they have to choose a certain number from within that section. For example, on a chemical reactions unit assessment, students had to choose 5 chemical reactions to write, balance, and assign states of matter to from a list of 8 options. On this same assessment, I also had a section where they had to choose 2 of 3 to answer a conceptual question.
There you have it! Two ways to add student choice to quizzes and tests. I’ll be back with another blog post about how to add some student choice to labs. What do you think of this format? Have you used it before? Would you like to add it in the future? Let me know over on Instagram. Happy teaching!
