Friday, April 10, 2009

So as I was reading the Kids Take on "The Test" article I thought it was pretty crappy that the students were being taught TO a test. The article describes how a middle school class in Palatine, IL used Problem based Learning to develop test taking skills. I did think it was pretty smart of the teacher to connect the students to the test by showing them how it affected their school. It was almost propoganda. When the skills development was being explained it made me cringe. When you teach kids test taking skills, you arent really teaching them important skills for future use, you are really focusing on what is obviously important to teachers, money and repututation for their classroom. I understand that it allowed the kids to get better test scores and made them not think about what they were doing but.....IDK I am having a hard time justifying teaching to a test. The awesome thing is that it really motivated the kids to want to learn and actively engage in the process. All the responses put forth by students said that they had fun in school WHILE learning. That seems to be pretty hard to do sometimes. I do think PBL is a great way for kids to learn new skills and attract their attention to the classroom, I just dont agree at all with the project which this teacher chose to do the PBL on.

1 comment:

  1. I agree with you Brian. I think tests are an overused tool for teachers. Too much emphasis is placed on tests when many kids are not very skilled at taking them. They can be a tool for assessment, but not the ONLY tool!

    ReplyDelete