Putting quizzing into practice: tracking and using Quizlet

Over the last year, Nova Hreod’s revision vision and the focus within many of our departments has been on the need for strong subject knowledge as a means to support skills. Within the humanities department, this has been implemented mainly through the use of knowledge organisers, “Do Now” quizzes at the beginning of each lesson and the using of “quizzing homework”, where pupils either write a quiz about a specific topic or test themselves on a previous quiz.

I have used two techniques within my classroom to make this framework as effective as possible: tracking “Do Now” quizzes and using Quizlet to supplement homework.

Tracking “Do Now” quizzes:

I have a reputation around school for using spreadsheets in almost every aspect of my teaching and quizzing is no exception.

Each lesson, pupils complete a 10 question quiz. 6 of these questions focus on one topic and the other four are randomly selected from a bank of questions from the other topics that pupils have student (spreadsheet number 1).

Once we have gone through the answers to the quiz as a class, I take in each pupil’s score and create a class average, which I then plot on a graph (spreadsheet number 2!). Pupils have a ‘pass line’ to show the minimum expectation (there is no sanction if this line is not reached, it is more an indication that there is a potential problem with the topic) and a ‘reward line’ which allows them to earn a class reward if they stay over the line for 7 lessons in a row. This line moves up by 10% (to a maximum of 90%) with each round of rewards.

 I believe this allows quizzing to be effective for a number of reasons:

• It clearly demonstrates progress over time; Classes can easily look back at how far they’ve come since September every lesson.

• It encourages pupils to help each other as they are all working towards the same goal.

• As a teacher, the graph allows me to quickly identify concepts which the class has found difficult or which may need to be revisited.

• Equally, knowing the class average allows me to quickly identify those pupils who probably won’t benefit from whole class instruction and need me to explain topics on an individual or small group basis.

Using Quizlet to supplement homework:

In all humanities subjects, pupils are either asked to write a quiz or to quiz on a topic for homework. I’ll admit, when the department first introduced this style of homework, it was quite a learning curve: I hastily put “Write a 10 question quiz about X” on the board at the end of lesson, expecting that pupils would know what to do. As a result, I quickly discovered that pupils didn’t know how to write quizzes or how to quizzes; some quizzes were taken straight from the internet, some pupils thought it would be ‘cheating’ to use the knowledge organisers as the basis for their questions, some pupils didn’t include answers to their questions and some pupils’ quizzes consisted purely of “true or false” questions.

Fortunately, www.quizlet.com came to the rescue.

This (free) website allows teachers or pupils to quickly a set of terms and definitions which can then be used to complete a variety of different activities. The activities were not created equal (“match” encourages familiarity rather than knowledge).

However, as with quiz tracking, there are a number of reasons why Quizlet effectively supports quizzing.

• The quizzes I create provide an excellent model of different styles of questions for when pupils write their own quizzes.

• The ‘sets’ of terms and definitions are extremely versatile, allowing pupils to complete a range of activities or to print the sets to use offline.

• Those pupils who find it difficult to write, can’t understand their handwriting or who restart work when they make errors benefit from the ability to type their work and correct any mistakes.

• The data which Quizlet provides about my quizzes gives me valuable information about any areas which I may need to reteach.

Quizlet’s blog (https://quizlet.com/blog) has shown me teachers using quizlet in a huge number of creative an innovative ways. For the time being, I’m more than happy to use it as a method of reinforcing quizzing. In the wise words of one of my year 11 pupils this year: “Where there are flashcards, there’s a way. Where there’s quizlet, there’s an A.”