Tuesday, January 13, 2015

Teach Fzx Tuesday - Multiple Choice Practice

Multiple Choice is tough.  It requires good written language skills the extended attention span of a Sumatran Tiger stalking it prey in Borneo.  Tigers, however, don't read signs and they stalk for survival so we're asking a lot of our students.


Plus, unless you're a genius, your best hope on the SAT and the Physics Mid-Term is to eliminate obviously wrong answers and use the clock method to pick your final answer.

Since we have limited testing and correcting time, multiple choice is a large portion of this test - 50%+.  And since January happens to be the peak of delays and cancellations for cold and snow it's tough to get all the Mid-Term Review done.

The week prior to the big test, I open all the online class resources and direct my Honors Physics students to excellent resources like ThePhysicsClassroom.com where they can review concepts and practice their multiple choice skills.  But external resources aren't enough since I write or modify all the MC questions.

Three years ago I happened upon a method that would give MC test practice using my language and the elimination thought process of multiple choice.  Previous reviews were linear and weren't so successful.  This one requires less time from the students, does a quick concept review, and improves their test skills.

First is a chart in which I have organized all the major terms and quantities - name, symbol, units, definition, equation.  It's twisty because I've intentionally placed dozens of mistakes in the two page chart.

Corrected Chart at Right

Students prefer it since they don't have to write a lot and it's like a game.  Finding a teacher's mistakes is a fun thing to do.

Lying to children is good sometimes.  Part II of this review includes more than 50 of these lies representing common physics misconceptions.  Students are to correct these statements, 15% of which are correct as they stand.


For three years I've done this for Honors Physics and for Nuclear Science.  I like it.  Students like it.  It works.

2 comments:

  1. Embrace testing. It has the best grade-impact / time-spent ratio of anything by far.
    http://www.lacitycollege.edu/services/learningskills/test/Guessrule.html

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  2. That looks a lot like the old SAT multiple choice advice I used to great success.

    ReplyDelete