Practicing exam-style questions is one of the key steps to assessment success.
Here are five activities you can use with your students.
Give every pupil a slip of paper and ask them to write an exam-style question on it.
(This activity is appropriate once pupils have some experience of exam-style questions.)
You might what to specify an area of the syllabus to which these questions should refer. When students have written their questions, collect in the slips of paper, shuffle them and then redistribute them.
Pupils attempt whatever question they are given.
The activity is concluded in one of two ways. Either student answers are taken in, shuffled and redistributed for marking, or answers are returned to the question-authors for marking. The latter approach is made easier if students write their names on their slips of paper.
Students work in groups of two or three. Each group is given a piece of paper containing five exam-style questions.
Beneath each question there is space in which to write. Groups are invited to work through the various questions and to analyse what a high-level response ought to contain.
The teacher indicates a range of areas that should be considered in each case. For example: command words, content and concepts. When sufficient time has elapsed, groups are asked to share their ideas and a discussion ensues.
Finally, the teacher asks students to choose one of the questions and to produce a full answer. These are then peer-assessed.
As an extension task, ask students to write an exam-style question based on what they have being studying in the lesson.
As a super-extension task, ask students to answer their question, or to swap questions with a peer and to answer that question instead.
Students work in groups of three or four. Each group is given a large sheet of paper and an exam-style question.
One member of each group writes the group’s question at the top of their piece of paper. Groups are given five minutes to discuss the question.
They are reminded that they are not trying to answer it as they would do in an exam, rather they are discussing the subject of the question, the different approaches you could take to answer it, and the various things that might form part of an answer.
One member of each group notes down the key points on their piece of paper.
When the five minutes are up, groups swap pieces of paper and repeat the exercise with a new question.
This continues until the teacher decides that discussion has been exhausted.
A follow-up could involve all the sheets of paper being placed at the front of the room and students choosing one question to answer in full. They would use the pieces of paper to help them do this.
Students work in groups of three. Each group is given an exam-style question and a large piece of paper.
Groups are asked to create a map of their question. This map should include all the different concepts, ideas, evidence, examples, theories and so on that could be visited during an answer.
The various elements should be placed in different parts of the map and supplemented by illustrations.
Groups are then invited to walk around the room and to examine the maps their peers have created.
A piece of blank paper should be placed beneath each map.
As groups look at each other’s creations, they should note down on the blank paper anything they think has been missed. They should also provide a rationale as to why it should have been included.
