PLT 7 - 12 Practice Test

In a history class on the Great Depression, Mr. Andrews has an objective that students are able to recognize a variety of causes for the event. Which of the following would be an appropriate assessment of this goal?

A concept map. A concept map would help students recognize the variety of underlying causes that created the Great Depression, or any other historical event. It would visualize and organize the information, and it serves the goal of the stated objective.

Two teachers of 10th grade students at Bayview High School want to collaborate on a unit of study. This is not a practice commonly done at Bayview. The teachers teach science and history and want to combine their subjects to provide students with an interdisciplinary approach to learning. Which of the following should they prepare for to document the effectiveness of teaching and learning?

A measurable outcome. Planning an assessment that assesses both student achievement and the overall effectiveness of instruction would be a tool to assess the future use of such an interdisciplinary approach.

Which of the following would be the best assessment of the effectiveness of a standards-based lecture-style approach to instruction?

A standardized test. Assessments are intended to be aligned to instruction. If a standards-based lecture style is employed, a test designed to assess achievement of those standards by the students would be most appropriate.

Summative Assessment

A summative assessment will provide a summation of the knowledge gained by the teaching and learning experience in the class. It can summarize individual student knowledge and provide information about what the class as a whole understood from instruction which provides insight into the efficacy of the lesson planning.

Ms. Newcomb is a first year teacher. She wants to develop her own assessments and is concerned with the validity of the tests she gives. Which of the following steps must she take in order to do this?

Align the test to her day to day teaching objectives. A valid test is one that tests exactly the material taught. The concept of validity is critical to proper assessment creation and will stand up to the scrutiny of students/parents/ teachers/administrators who may question the fairness of an assessment.

Ms. Vazques teaches a Language Arts class using a workshop model. Her students spend a lot of time working on the writing process. At the beginning of the year, she wants to gauge what her students' individual processes for writing are like. Which of the following would be the most appropriate assessment to gain this information?

Asking students to write her a letter explaining how they approach a writing assignment. This would be most appropriate because it would involve all the students. It would ask them to describe how they perform a task in order to provide the teacher with information about how all her students are performing in the area on which she will focus her teaching.

Mrs. Raj is teaching a unit on development writing. She asks students to brainstorm ideas using two different visual aids. She asks student to develop a traditional outline on their topic and a spider web-style outline on their topic. Which of the following instructional techniques is Mrs. Raj employing?

Developing conceptual thinking. Thinking through the ideas a writer plans to present in a piece of writing requires the development of concepts. Aiding students in this process by providing visual and organizational aids can make the process more supportive.

Amy Grant is generally a good student. Her grades usually fall into the B range. In the third quarter of her sophomore year, her grades drop to a level just above failing. Her teacher recognizes that she is trying not to fail, however her efforts are not where they had been. Which of the following would be the least appropriate response to this change in grades?

Discussing with Amy's parents why her grades are slipping. This would be the least appropriate of the above choices because it circumvents the student in question. A dramatic shift in performance is indicative of a problem, and bringing her parents in to speculate may not be the best solution. There could be problems at home, and Amy should have a chance to explain the issues with her teachers, counselors and parents. In any event, Amy should be consulted.

Washington High School is a very large school. There are six sections of senior English and the department faculty wants to make sure that all students are succeeding to the standards set as a department rather than the standards of any one teacher. Which of the following actions would be best suited for the department to undertake?

If the department reviewed the course objectives, lesson objectives and assessment standards, the department could plan on instruction and assessment that is standardized throughout all the sections. The daily learning and teaching would build to the common assessment performed to gauge achievement.

Ms. Jenks has students keep meticulous notes in her English class on the books they are reading, and the discussions held in class. During class one day, she asks students to review their notes and highlight the ideas that are most interesting to them. She then instructs students to generate questions to tackle in an essay assignment. This assignment would be an example of which type of learning?

Inquiry Learning. Inquiry or discovery learning, is a form of learning that allows students to ask their own questions and pursue the answers. A writing assignment can allow students the chance to explore thoughts amidst a wide range of topics.

Ms. DeMarco notices in her analysis of test scores for students in her socioeconomic bracket, that reading comprehension levels are low. Consequently, she plans to refine her objectives so that there is more emphasis on reading comprehension. Which of the following strategies should she put in place to accomplish this goal?

More scaffolded assignments. If an objective were tailored to fit an assessment objective due to low testing performance, then giving supports and tools to the students would be appropriate. Comprehension is one of the lower domain objectives in Bloom's Taxonomy and would require a more guided approach than later stage domains such as evaluation and synthesis.

An IQ, or Intelligence Quotient test assesses one person's intelligence in comparison to others. This type of assessment would be which of the following?

Norm-referenced Assessment. IQ tests are generally the most well known form of norm-referenced assessments. The "norm" is a comparative measure. An IQ test ranks intelligence of the test-taker to the intelligence of other test takers, and is therefore "referenced" to the "norm."

Middle Vale High School works hard to prepare their students for standardized tests like the PSAT and SAT. In the 9th grade year, all students are given a standardized test to determine their current abilities. Once the students have taken the test, the tests are first graded to see the original data that each student has generated. The score associated with this grading system would be which of the following?

Raw Score. A raw score represents the number of questions answered correctly by the test taker. A collection of raw scores can be used to determine percentile rankings.

Assessments that rank the achievement and ability in a subject of each child in a grade, provides data that is most useful to which of the following groups of people?

Teachers. Because teachers can apply this information for instructional purposes, it would be most to useful to them. Teachers can understand the proficiencies and deficiencies of their students through this information and teach accordingly.

At the beginning of the school year, Middle Vale High School gives a standardized test to all 9th graders. The purpose of this test is to determine the grade-level equivalencies for each student. The school makes the test a "No-Stakes Test," meaning it has no impact on the students' grades, and just asks the students to do their best. What would be the most useful purpose of such a test?

To provide teachers with grade-level equivalents for their students. This would be the most useful purpose for such a test. Teachers would be prepared to differentiate instruction as necessary without penalizing any student. It also would allow for lower-performing students to benefit from higher performing students, and vice versa. While such a test may have many uses, the most useful outcome is to create better teaching and learning.

The National Assessment of Educational Progress is an assessment administered to a sampling of 4th, 8th and 12th grade students. It has no bearing on the grades or scores of a student. Individual results are not calculated or returned. The information assesses an entire state and reports findings on a statewide basis, not a student- by -student or district- by -district basis. Which of the following is the purpose of a no-stakes assessment like the National Assessment of Educational Progress?

To understand what students know and can do. An assessment like this would provide a benchmark of ability. This data can be used to plan for curricular objectives and standards. This data can also be analyzed in a variety of ways to look at other educational indicators.