hopefulteacher

School Box 1

Here is my first podcast.  I am going to add just below the script that I used, even though I did veer a little from it when I was actually recording.  Hopefully my improvisation was for the better.  The tips I give in this recording are strategies I use when taking tests, I hope they prove helpful to anyone who listens in.  The song I used in the intro and closing was:
A Life Among Ghosts.  "Tragic Hero"                                                                                                                                                                                                                                     Nowhere Wolves, 2008
The Script:

Hello, and welcome to the first installment of my podcast the School Box. First a little intro, I choose this name, because I wanted this podcast to be about offering up handy tools for students to use primarily in social studies, but can be applicable in other subjects as well. The focus is not on content, like who fought in King Phillip’s War, or why didn’t America join the League of Nations. Instead the point of this is to focus on tips best taught outside of class time. These tips will range from how should I conduct research? What makes a good thesis? And lastly the topic of today: Test taking strategies.
Now when it comes to taking a test, there are a few important things I would recommend you start with. The first one is be familiar with how many questions and what kinds of questions the test will ask of you. The reason for this is that some tasks such as true and false questions will take a lot less time to complete then an essay. This may seem like common sense to many, but it’s an important point that can be easily overlooked. Also start at the beginning and answer each question, at least any question you can select the best answer for in a short period of time. I’d make a recommendation, but different test lengths, times, and types of questions make it hard for me to give a generalization. In short I’d use your own judgment, only move on if you are absolutely stuck, and you plan on coming back later to make a quick guess. My point here is that, flittering around an exam makes it easy to overlook questions, or in the case of a scantron get correct answers in the bubble for the wrong question.
Now that we’ve got some basic tactics for the entire test out of the way, this podcast in particular is going to deal with multiple choice questions. Later podcasts will discuss other types of questions such as matching, true false, short answer and essay. All right, let’s begin:
To start off read that the question is read all the way through. I know I can speak from experience that I have zipped through an exams a little too fast and made careless mistakes. It’s possible to think you know the answer off the first few words, only to miss the term “best” or “not” near the end of the sentence. While not has its obvious effects on the correct answer, best can also cause a huge impact. A person could miss the “best” part of a question, and see what still a correct answer is and selects it. Like I said a correct answer sure but it may not be the “best” answer.
The next step after reading the question in its entirety, Always try to answer the question before you even look at the answers. Then see if you can find an answer that is at least the same idea as what you thought up. If you can find your answer out of the choices, you’ve probably picked the right one…and if you’re wrong…at the very least you’re telling you teacher that maybe they didn’t teach it well enough?!
So, what if you’ve read it all the way and honestly don’t know the answer? What then? Answer C? NO! Ideally a well-made test will not have any one option the correct answer then the rest. What I recommend is keep the question in mind, and ask yourself what you know about each of the options. Usually two of the options are going to be clearly off the mark, so you shouldn’t have to worry about only having a 25% chance when you’re stuck; usually it’s more like 50%. So hopefully you should be able to whittle yourself down to two options. Try to remember what you know about each of the answers. If the situation was reversed and the answers were the questions, would the question fit as the answer? This is where you should try problem solving first instead of just guessing. Maybe one of the options will have a minor detail wrong like time period, or you can remember that it’s associated with another person or event. If you know details like this, it’ll help you weed out the correct answer.
Well that’s all the time we have for today, be sure to check back, as next time we’re going to have a back to back feature! We will cover how to attack True False and Matching questions!