All test prep should be prefaced with a close reading of the following quotation:
We may take as our guide here John Dewey’s observation that the content of a lesson is the least important thing about learning. As he wrote in Experience and Education: “Perhaps the greatest of all pedagogical fallacies is the notion that a person learns only what he is studying at the time. Collateral learning in the way of formation of enduring attitudes… may be and often is more important than the spelling lesson or lesson in geography or history… For these attitudes are fundamentally what count in the future.” In other words, the most important thing one learns is always something about how one learns. As Dewey wrote in another place, we learn what we do.
~Neil Postman, Amusing Ourselves to Death
That is one of the two framing quotations on the front page of this instructional site, and it gets at the core philosophy of a makerspace: You learn by doing, and by thinking about thinking — being a “capable psychonaut,” as it’s called in this unit on akrasia and self-control.
You should also read the guide to grade abatement and this clarification of the process. Test prep, like everything else, relies on universal skills and traits. It teaches us as much as we allow it to teach us.
Castle Learning Triage: 8/16 Practice
Students in New York must pass the ELA Common Core Regents Exam to graduate high school. It’s a comprehensive exam, which means it is not explicitly tied to a single year of ELA instruction; in fact, it can be taken and retaken at any time, with permission1. All but a few of you will take it at the end of your junior year.
Whenever we do test prep, we are really performing triage — score-driven, teacher-assisted triage. We are also identifying strengths in order to promote a better form of feedback.
The practice discussed in this post comes from the ELA Common Core Regents Exam given in August of 2016. We will use Castle Learning.
Castle Learning has already been set up for each of you according to class period. If you are in a different situation (e.g., graduating early and needing to take the exam in January of what would have been your junior year), you will be added individually. You’ll need your Castle Learning login information, which you can get from any of your teachers. Here is the main site:
You will be helped through the registration process, if this is your first time using the service. Once you are registered, you’ll find these tasks have been assigned to you:
- 8/16 Practice: Part 1 – Passage A
- 8/16 Practice: Part 1 – Passage B
- 8/16 Practice: Part 1 – Passage C
- 8/16 Practice: Part 2
- 8/16 Practice: Part 3
For each of those, there is an additional CR — Constructed Response — that asks you to be metacognitive about your choices and performance. These metacognitive constructed responses are essential. They turn cursory work into meaningful work, and they force us to identify and analyze strengths and weaknesses.
For Part 1, which pairs close reading with multiple-choice questions, the metacognitive prompt is this:
Use teacher feedback, your peers, and the correct answers that are provided by Castle Learning to engineer an understanding of how these questions and answer choices work. Write metacognitively about the passage, the questions, and your problem-solving efforts.
For Part 2 and Part 3, which ask for writing responses, the metacognitive prompt is this:
Identify and analyze several writing choices you made in this response. You can focus on your use of detail, your arrangement, your central meaning, or your rhetorical manipulation of grammar and style.
Part 2 and Part 3 will be assigned to students through Castle Learning. There will be no corresponding Google Classroom assignment; scores and feedback will be given through Castle Learning itself. To receive feedback (and credit), the following five steps must be completed:
- Write Part 2 and Part 3 by hand in the provided essay booklet.
- Type Part 2 in Castle Learning, revising it as you type.
- Write a thorough response to the metacognitive prompt about Part 2 in Castle Learning.
- Type Part 3 in Castle Learning, revising it as you type.
- Write a thorough response to the metacognitive prompt about Part 3 in Castle Learning.
The last step we will take is to look at exemplary student responses, which are provided by New York:
Additional Notes
Use this post to ask questions about the August 2016 exam. These questions can be related to procedure or to the passages, questions, and prompts. These comments will be used now and in the future to save students time.
Remember that this is a grade-abated assessment. Your score on each part of the practice exam is important, and you will be given that score. It does not factor into your GPA, however, because that score is not nearly as important as understanding the how and why of that score. Those of you who struggle on tests will focus on collaboration, growth, and metacognitive insight. Those of you who excel will focus on using metacognitive insight to help others reach your level.
Later this year, we’ll talk about score conversions, final scores, and the gamesmanship necessary for high-stakes exams. Here is a preview:
Our school has experimented with a few different options. For a couple of years, we gave the exam to sophomores, even having some sophomores take it in January. That was before the test was overhauled and brought in line with Common Core, though. ↩