Making Science Tests Fun

In this charming article in Science Scope, former middle-school science teacher Fred Ende says that if students are uncomfortable and anxious when they take assessments, validity and reliability suffer, no matter how well-designed the assessment is. “[A]nxious students are often less able to concentrate (thus affecting validity) and regularly second-guess their thinking (likely having an impact on reliability),” says Ende. “If we cannot even rely on the measures we’ve designed with reliability and validity in mind, how can we hope to accurately assess our students and provide them with useful feedback?”

One answer, he says, is to reduce students’ anxiety by making assessments into stories that contain an element of humor and the unexpected. Here’s one of his tests:

Snow Day! It’s a few weeks after the February break, and it seems like another regular day at school. You’ve attended your morning classes and are sitting in your fifth-period class when all of a sudden a tremendous blizzard begins. Before you know it, there is so much snow on the ground, students and faculty can’t leave the building. The phone lines are down, and the roads are impassable. Looks like you’ll be here for a while. 

• Which of the main types of energy did the snowflakes have right before they fell from the clouds? Why? 
• Some of the flakes that are falling are moving really fast! At what point in their fall would they have the greatest kinetic energy? Why? 
• Suddenly the heat shuts down and the temperature starts to drop. You open your binder and with the help of your handy-dandy belt-buckle thermometer, you begin to record the change in temperature. [A table with declining temperature over eleven minutes: 77, 72, 68, 66, 64, 62, 61, 60, 59, 58, 58 degrees]
• Graph the data in this table on the attached graph paper using a ruler, making sure to include labels for each axis, units for each label, and a title.
• Calculate the rate of change for your line from zero to five minutes in the space below, showing all your work.
• Is this graph an example of a direct or inverse relationship? 
• What happens to the rate of change in this graph as time changes? How do you know?

When Ende first rolled out a story assessment, a few students asked, “Is this for real?” and when he said yes, he got smiles, head-shakes, and blank stares. “Interestingly, five minutes later, the mood seemed to have lifted dramatically,” he says. “An otherwise quiet room was interspersed with laughter as students read through the more humorous segments. Students would look up at me, make eye contact, and grin before going back to their work, and I’m confident that the majority of students were smiling as they finished that first assessment, regardless of whether or not they believed they did well.” 

Did the story assessments affect performance? Ende says that compared to tests on the same content the year before, scores were 10 percent higher. More important, students were happier after taking the tests, according to surveys conducted during the year: 90 percent of students said they preferred this type of test, and 75-80 percent said the tests lowered their anxiety level. Students were also more likely to ask for help when they finished, especially students who hadn’t reached out for help before. “Whether students inquired about where the story came from or told me how bad my sense of humor was, the narrative nature of the assessments served as a bridge to discussing student achievement, giving feedback, and constructing steps for future improvement,” he says. 

Ende kept creating story assessments over several years, and says students frequently came back to tell him how much they enjoyed his tests. Here are his suggestions for writing such assessments:

• First, create your test in the “standard” format, focusing on the “big ideas” and skills students are expected to master.
• Think about a story that might fit. Do you want a character in it? Should students play a role? Can you use any humorous situations from your classroom, current events, or pop culture?
• Create the story, focusing at first on injecting personality and a moving plot. Don’t make it too involved, and keep it light and humorous.
• Combine the story with the substance, starting with natural melding points. “The story should flow well, and remember, you’re not writing a novella,” says Ende. “Keep it simple.” 
• Do the assessment yourself and see how long it takes, adding time for students who work more slowly. Trim if necessary.
• Administer and make adjustments based on students’ reactions and performance. 
• Compare results with standard assessments on the same content.

“Every Assessment Tells a Story” by Fred Ende in Science Scope, January 2014 (Vol. 37, #5, p. 32-37), http://digital.nsta.org/publication/index.php?i=188346&m=&l=&p=4&pre=&ver=flex;

Ende can be reached at fende@pnwboces.org.

From the Marshall Memo #521