Exams

I finished grading my students' finals a few days ago. I actually sort of look forward to grading tests. Sometimes it takes awhile and sometimes it's not much fun, but it's also nice as a teacher to see how well my students learned the material. And if they didn't learn it well, it still helps me to know what I need to work on when I teach the class again.

But tests are fun to read for other reasons, as well. Especially math tests for elementary teachers. We do a lot of word problems - solving them and writing them and explaining the concepts behind the solutions. Most of my students stick to basic word problem themes, like sharing pizza (oldest fraction story problem in the book) or using fabric to make aprons (last semester everyone wrote apron-making problems, and for the life of me I couldn't figure out how that strange little classroom meme started). But some students get creative...

The problem, for 2 divided by 3, reads: "Mark has 2 signed pictures of Jimmer Fredette that he wants to distribute among 3 friends. The friends don't care if they get an entire picture, but they at least want an equal portion. How can Mark divide the 2 pictures so that his 3 friends each get an equal portion?" I really like the students' attention to mathematical detail in explaining why it would be okay to end up with an answer of 2/3 of a picture.

...or have fun with illustrations...

...or even include commentary.

In case you can't tell, this is an illustration of 7 cupcakes being shared equally among 4 people, with a "footnote" explaining that the cupcakes are not drawn to scale.

I think I should start giving bonus problems for creativity. It makes grading more fun, and perhaps their future students will thank me for teachers who can write word problems about subjects other than pizza.

And then there are responses like these:

Although I feel bad when a student struggles and struggles and struggles with a particular problem, I kind of really love the apologetic smiley face. It's as though the student felt worse that they had disappointed me and didn't want me to feel bad that they struggled and struggled and struggled.

For the record, I think this particular student did just fine on the rest of the test.

And now, summer.