Curriculum and Assessment Design Training plans: Whole school ASSESSMENT 2 Meaningful assessment overview

Multiple choice questions Multiple choice tests/quizzes are a useful form of assessment. These are some of the reasons to use multiple choice questions. To assess key factual knowledge To measure what you value To help you make reliable inferences about what pupils know.

Constructing the stem Remember to consider the following: The stem must be meaningful and present a clear question or problem, so that pupils do not have to make guesses about what is being asked. It should avoid use of complicated vocabulary or necessary detail. It should focus on the key knowledge you have highlighted and taught as part of the unit of work.

Constructing effective alternatives Remember to consider the following: The alternatives should not give hints about the answer e.g. by having two alternatives with similar ideas and the third being noticeably different The alternative works best when it is a full or partial sentence rather than having to insert a word within a sentence Avoid using negative phrasing Use the same style of phrasing for each alternative

Create your own MCQs CHECKLIST Content Do the questions link to your areas of knowledge? What inferences do you want to be able to make from the answers? Does it include the key factual knowledge of the term? Stems Does the stem present a clear and definite problem? Does it include only relevant material? Have you avoided negative phrasing? Is it a question or a partial sentence? Have you used more questions than partial sentences? Alternatives Are all the alternatives plausible? Are all the alternatives homogenous? Are they all free from clues (same grammar, length etc)? Have you avoided ‘all of the above’ and ‘none of the above’ phrases? Are the alternatives presented in a logical order? Have you included any probing questions? Further Reading https://pragmaticreform.wordpress.com/2014/03/08/whymcqs/ https://cft.vanderbilt.edu/guides-sub-pages/writing-good-multiple-choice-testquestions/ https://thewingtoheaven.wordpress.com/2013/10/06/closed-questions-andhigher- order-thinking/ https://joeybagstock.wordpress.

Feedback, embed, evaluate Complete your MCQ, use with your pupils and evaluate the outcomes.