Writing Propositions and Assessment Items

1. Writing Propositions and Assessment Items By connie beard

2. Writing propositions • Propositions are statements of important facts, concepts, or understandings that students are responsible for learning. • Propositions help a teacher efficiently • Identify the content that will be tested • Develop any type of selected response item that reflects the content • KnowledgePropositions • Reasoning Propositions • Interpretive Exercises

3. Writing Items • Multiple-Choice Items • Turn the basic focus of the proposition into a question. • Turn the other part of the proposition into the correct answer, adding other plausible answers. • True/False Items • True—Use the proposition as stated. • False—Make one part of the proposition false. • Matching Items • Take similar propositions and separate them into stems and matching parts. • Fill-in-the-Blank Items • Write the proposition, leaving out the phrase that defines the concept or deals with the effect.

4. Guidelines for writing quality items • General Guidelines • Keep wording simple and focused. • Ask a full question in the stem. • Eliminate clues to the correct answer either within the question or across questions within a test. • grammatical cues • Do not make the correct answer obvious to students who have not studied the material. • Highlight critical, easily overlooked words. • Have a qualified colleague read your items to ensure appropriateness. • Double-check the scoring key for accuracy before scoring.

5. More Guidelines for writing quality items • Guidelines for Multiple-Choice Items • Ask a complete question to get the item started, if possible. • Don’t repeat the same words within each response option; rather, reword the item stem to remove the repetitive material. • Be sure there is only one correct or best answer. • Specify that students are to select the “best answer”. • Choose distractors carefully. • Make all response options the same length. • Don’t use “all of the above” or “none of the above” to fill space. • Use “always” or “never” cautiously in answer choices. • It’s okay to vary the number of response options presented.

6. More Guidelines for writing quality items • Guidelines for True/False Exercises • Make the item entirely true or false as stated. • Guidelines for Matching Items • Provide clear directions for making the match. • Keep the list of things to be matched short. • Maximum number of options is 10 • Shorter is better • Keep the list of things to be matched homogeneous. • Do not mix events with dates or names.