There seems to be a lot of "Teacher Lounge" Discussions these days that reference the inability of students to think or reason. Most tests, as a matter of fact, seem to focus little on problem-solving or logic, and place the most emphasis on what I refer to as "vomitous learning". This kind of learning is what makes parents expect every student to be an "A" student--it is the kind of fact-remembering (not problem-solving) education that continues to encourage our students to just memorize everything, then effectively "vomit" it onto a test. Recently, I found myself grading a bunch of blackline master Science tests (which I use seldom, because I feel that the multiple-choice questions are writtent to "trick" students), and saw very interesting trends in my classes. In the first two sections of the test, students were getting very high scores (85-95 percent correct), while those same students were scoring only 60-80 percent in the final two sections. How could this be? The first two sections were multiple-choice or vocabulary/definition with matching opportunities. The last two pages were short-answer/essay questions, which required deductive reasoning and attention to details.
I cannot say I was very surprised by these results, but it did make me want to do two things. First of all, I make a point to only give credit in essays for the points that are adequately addressed. If students do not answer all parts of the question, they will receive only the credit they deserve (rather than no credit at all, which would really throw the parents for a loop!). I am also explaining which parts of the questions they missed, to try and build their essay-writing abilities. I don't know who taught me to address all of the parts of an essay question, but I am grateful to those teachers who did.
I have also ordered a logic book to begin working with my 5th grade students (maybe a logic club in the morning, 2 days per week?). I ordered "Logic Links", and will blog about how that logic training goes.
Until the next bell....
~K
