End of topic tests
After a topic has been taught, or at regular intervals throughout the course, teachers can set tests for their students. These are used to decide the next steps in learning, known as formative assessment and to provide a snapshot of attainment and progress known as summative assessment.
Tasks is perfect for setting end of topic tests because an end of topic test can be set in less than 3 minutes and include exam style questions that can be easily configured by the teacher.
With self, peer and AI marking options the teacher can also avoid lots of marking if they choose to.
A teacher can:
- Use Tasks to create a new test or copy an existing test.
- Choose the topics to include in the test.
- Choose the number and type of questions to be selected.
- Set availability dates, deadlines and automatic submission.
- Choose who will mark the task: teacher, student or a peer.
- Select which students to assign the test to.
After the assessment, a teacher can:
- Review self, peer and AI marking.
- Leave written feedback against individual questions or the whole test.
- Automatically collate marks in a downloadable markbook.
- Compare assessments as percentages are recorded in addition to the total number of marks.
- Analyse student performace with reports.
Select the experience you want for your students
Tasks can include multiple-choice questions that are marked automatically; Terms questions that ask the students to write definitions to subject specific terms and Advance questions that require extended written answers. So called, "level of response" or "chained response" questions are also included in Smart Revise. Those are questions marked in assessment objective bands instead of a mark per point made.
The research
Monthly review is one of the Rosenshine principles. The effort involved in recalling recently-learned material embeds it in long-term memory. The more this happens, the easier it is to connect new material to prior knowledge.
Conducting monthly reviews of everything that has been learned so far, or end of topic tests allows the teacher to assess how well a topic has been taught, how much has been learned and identify misconceptions.
Response to intervention (RTI) is an educational approach that provides early, systematic assistance to students who are struggling in one or many areas of their learning. RTI seeks to prevent academic failure through early intervention and frequent progress measurement.
John Hattie claims response to intervention can have a +1.29 positive effect, i.e. it makes a significant difference.
Effective RTI begins with high quality teaching and screening students. Struggling learners are identified and provided with classroom interventions to accelerate their rate of learning. (Tier 1) Those not making progress are then provided with increasingly intensive instruction usually in small groups (Tier 2). If still no progress, then students receive individualised, intensive interventions that target the students’ skill deficits (Tier 3).
The International Academy of Education, 21(2010). Rosenshine, B. (2012) Principles of Instruction: Research-Based Strategies That All Teachers Should Know. American Educator, 36(1), p12-39.
Hattie, J. (2008) Visible Learning: A Synthesis of over 800 Meta-Analyses Relating to Achievement. New York. Routledge.
Smart Revise is different
Most applications and websites provide students with the same number and the same set of questions in an end of topic test. Smart Revise is different because it will select new random questions each time a task is created. The teacher can also choose the number of questions they require with an indication of the time the test will take students. Ideal for fitting a test into a whole lesson.
The teacher can clone tasks if they want to set the same questions for multiple classes or conduct resit assessments. They can also swap out questions to make more bespoke and tailored assessments.