This year I have started to make weekly quizzes for Key Stage 3 classes across the faculty to help students to retain knowledge throughout the year. At the bottom of this post I have added links to example quizzes that I have used (feel free to have a go!).
Our Key Stage 3 students all have their own Chromebooks and at the start of the year I would have been the first to admit that I wasn’t sure how to use them effectively in lessons. However, once I had learned how to use Google Forms I quickly realised that it would provide a good platform for using weekly quizzes. They are easy to create – you can use EquatIO to include Maths notation, you can choose a variety of question types and you can set it up to self-mark (saving us a job!). As if that wasn’t enough to convince you, Google Forms provides you with analysis of answers so you can see how individual students, or groups of students, performed on each question. Of course not every school has Chromebooks, iPads or other technology for students, so these quizzes could just as easily be paper-based (I do this with my Year 11 class). Alternatively they could be set for homework instead.
When I made the first quiz I came up with 10 questions and informed students to take as long as they needed on the questions as it was important that they did not feel rushed. I had hoped the quiz would last around 10 minutes but instead it took some students around half an hour to complete, so I reduced the number of questions to 5 for the week after. Since then, it has fit into lessons much better and has been much more focused. The majority of the questions I use are diagnostic multiple choice, so I can quickly pinpoint misconceptions.
In order to keep track of the topics the quizzes have covered, I created a spreadsheet that I could edit weekly. An example can be downloaded here Weekly Quiz Ticklist Year 7
As you can see from in the linked document, I write down the week number under each topic when it is used in a question, so I can keep track of how I am spacing them.
The most important part of the quiz is the next step. This is important in 3 areas:
- For me: I use the analysis from the quizzes to create questions for the week after. For example, if a question is poorly answered I will include a similar question the week after
- For the teacher: the analysis should be used by the teacher to inform their lessons. If their class did not perform particularly well on a question they can either address it straight away, include it in starters or if needed, re-teach the skill.
- For the student: we subscribe to a website called Hegarty Maths which is a learning platform containing quizzes and linked videos for Maths topics. Each question has a linked Hegarty Clip Number and students pick out a question to work on each week, completing the Hegarty quiz for homework.
Below are some examples of quizzes I have made so far this year, including Google Forms quizzes for Years 7, 8 and 9, and paper-based quizzes for Year 11.
Year 7 Weekly Google Forms Quiz – https://goo.gl/forms/ebx2uYd2h8kjQFwp2
Year 8 Weekly Google Forms Quiz – https://goo.gl/forms/DWUFewfqWqdv76372
Year 9 Weekly Google Forms Quiz – https://goo.gl/forms/zSsLJJnXRnQXnZxz2
Year 11 Weekly Quiz – Year 11 Weekly Quiz 1
If you decide to try absolutely anything from this blog post I would really appreciate some feedback on how it went. Please could you fill in the document below and email it to MrE_Maths@hotmail.com
Thanks for reading 🙂
Gareth Evans Maths 