Final Exams

What is the objective of final exams?

My thoughts in the past have always been that it is a way for students to put together all the knowledge and skills they have been acquiring. It really forced students to go back and review what they had learned. So in the past I have always put a lot of emphasis on the final exam and made it 20% of the semester grade.

My one issue with final exams in the past has been that grades have always been due so quickly after the exam so that doing an authentic assessment is really out of the question (due to lack of time to correct it) and so my exams have traditionally been MC, T/F, fill in the blank, matching (no more than a word per answer). I've overcome that frustration slightly by adding an authentic part to it completed the week or two before hand and worth at least half of the final exam grade.

But today I sit here thinking about my Spanish I class. Over the weekend I had already started to put together a traditional exam using old ones as a guide. But when I gave students a chance today to look through their files and look through how much they had accomplished and reflect on it, I started to realize that with this group, they already had been putting it all together. And much of what they had learned throughout the year was still at their fingertips because they had retained so much. I realized that over the past months they had already demonstrated to me their ability to put it all together. One student even voiced my exact thoughts when she asked why we needed a final exam with all this proof of what they had accomplished.

So what is the point of the final exam now? Do I really need to give them a test that tells me exactly what I already know?

Short term memory

So I re-introduced direct object pronouns this week (we have already worked with them in previous chapters). And yesterday we were going through tons of examples and practice answering questions, simplifiying sentences, etc. I was calling students up individually to complete them (it is a class of only 5 so that meant students coming up multiple times) and was really impressed with how much they were catching on.

Then today I put on the board several questions, just like the ones we did yesterday. And my first hour kids looked at it as if I had written Greek on the board. They couldn't understand what the questions meant. They couldn't even pick out more than couple of words. And then when they went to try and answer it they didn't know how to use pronouns or anything. It was like they had never seen it before.

And then I asked them to get their homework out and asked them to put their answers on the board and some of them didn't even remember doing the worksheet (although they had it done) and couldn't really explain what they had done. And I know they did the worksheet themself because I watched them complete at least the first half of it in class yesterday.

And this wasn't a first. With the exception of my Spanish I group (I need to figure out what is different with this group), none of my classes retain anything no matter what I do. And it is beyond just not remember all the specifics of something. When things show up again (and again and again) they claim they have never even seen it before.

I know some of it has to do with their cramming before tests and not ever looking at the material other times. And I've talked with my students about the need to study a little each day but even my college bound seniors in Advanced Spanish just ignore me. But it has to be more than that. Because it is typical of students to cram.

I don't know what to do about it. I recycle old material constantly. I try and put everything I can into a context and get them some good comprehensible input. I hold them accountable for current AND all previous material. I use a huge variety in how we practice concepts. I don't know what to do to get them to remember something longer than 5 minutes.