How to Write a Midterm Exam for Reading in Middle School

Your lesson objectives should form the basis of your midterm exam questions.

Everyone knows how stressful middle school midterm exams are for students, but few realize that they can be just as stressful for teachers. Your midterm exam must assess students on the major ideas that you taught in your reading class, but not bog them down in trivial details from stories that they cannot realistically remember. Furthermore, your midterm exam must be challenging enough that students who understand the material can perform well, but not so difficult that only your brightest students can pass. By reviewing your course materials and lesson plans carefully, you can create a solid midterm exam for middle-school reading.

Instructions

1. Review your lesson plans and course notes for the major objectives of your lessons, such as identifying themes or defining the parts of plot. Because these are the most important points of your lessons, your midterm should focus on these overarching objectives rather than on specific events from the books and stories your students read.

2. Consider whether students have access to stories and books you read earlier in the semester. If they have their own copies of novels or if the short stories are in their reading textbook, you can ask about more specific details from these texts. However, if you have already collected the copies of the novels they read and do not intend to redistribute them, you should focus only on the texts' most basic and memorable ideas, because the students will not be able to use them to study.

3. Determine the sorts of questions you intend to ask on your midterm. Your midterm should feature a variety of different types of questions, such as multiple-choice, fill-in-the-blank, short-answer and essay, so students who are better at one type of question than another still have the chance to shine.

4. Reuse questions from previous tests and quizzes, as well as creating new questions. This will help ensure you use the same stories and books to cover the same standards and that your midterm does not introduce any material with which your students are unfamiliar. Rephrase the questions and multiple-choice answers so students cannot simply memorize answers from their old tests.

5. Include questions from all of the books and stories the class read. You don't have to include an equal number of questions from each story, but you should have at least one question for each of them. Students who study one story particularly hard should not have wasted their time because you did not include it on the test.

6. Plan the length of your midterm based on the amount of time the students have to take it. For instance, if they will have two class periods to take the exam, make it twice as long as your other tests. Keep in mind that short-answer and essay questions take longer to complete than multiple-choice questions even though they may take up less page space.

Tips & Warnings

• Do not introduce a new format of question on your midterm. Students may get the answers wrong, not because they misunderstand the material, but because they do not know how to answer that type of question. If you would like to try a new format of question on your midterm, give them a practice test with that format first.

• Give your students a comprehensive study guide so they will know exactly what to study. Include the basic gist of any essay questions or even the full text of the essay questions. Students will not know where to begin in reviewing a semester's worth of material and your study guide will help them know exactly what to expect on the exam.

References

• University of Chicago; Thoughts on How to Write an Exam; Linda Brant Collins; 2008
• "The First Days of School"; Harry K. Wong et. al.; 2005.