Test Strategy: Explain and Justify Questions
The Problem
So, this is the second year that my state has been using the ACT Aspire test as the End of Year summative assessment that replaced our state tests. It is supposed to help the students prepare to take the ACT test. However, I am not finding the formats to be that aligned at all. First, the students are assessed on a computer. I understand why, but we are not a 1:1 school, and students do most/all of their geometry learning without a computer. There are also “Explain and Justify” questions, which the ACT does not have. I will only address the second point as I get kind of whiny and tend to complain when I get going about assessing our students on computers when the class is not taught on a computer.
So, how am I preparing my students to be assessed on the “Explain and Justify” questions on the ACT Aspire test? Well, our district brought in a specialist on Depth of Knowledge (DoK) questions. The idea was to teach us how to formulate DoK questions, so that we incorporate more into our formative assessments. So, my team and I have worked to give the students more questions like this. But, naturally, they were not doing well on these questions just because we were exposing them to more of them. They needed to be taught how to approach the questions, answer them completely and thoroughly enough to earn all points possible.
The Solution
Well, I looked around for some strategies with no luck. So, I came up with my own and tried to make it culturally relevant. And with that, JuJu on the Beat was born. See the picture of the anchor chart below.