Last week during reading time, I taught my students about non-fiction text features, and used a test that my neighbor intern's teacher found online to design the lessons off of. We thought that this test would give an accurate depiction of the knowledge that my students learned about non-fiction text features, so we taught on. We had the students make their own non-fiction text feature book. Each time we introduced a feature, like the title, headings, captions, photographs and so on, we had the students write the feature, write the purpose of the feature, and find and write or draw an example from a real non-fiction book. We had three days to teach this, and on the third day, we finished up the last of the features and took the test. From walking around and observing my students, I thought that they would do spectacular. They were writing the features and purposes, and accurately finding the features in the actual books. Even during our quick review before the test, the students seemed to understand the content.
However, when the students started taking the test, they were confused, and struggled greatly with it. I even had to take a minute and look over the test to try and understand it. First of all, the format of the test was confusing, there were no directions, the font was super small, and the test was not easy to navigate. And above all, the language on the test did not match the language that we used during instruction. This quickly became evident as I was reading the test aloud. I became frustrated, the students were not understanding the test, and they were obviously distressed. I used my professional discretion and decided to stop the test and make one on my own.
While I was making the test, I had to make sure the test aligned with the standards that we were trying to cover, as well as the content that we covered in class. Along with the content in class, I had to make sure the test contained the language that I used during instruction, to make sure the students did not get confused. I will find out how the students performed later this week.
I learned an important thing during this process: language use is important. The language that we use to teach the students should be the same language that is on the exam. If this does not happen, the students may get confused and not understand the test, not allowing them to show what they really learned.