Hitting the Brakes

The students bombed my last biology quiz.  Even in the best class, the average grade was an F, 15.9 out of 30.  I know precisely the reason; its because the students cannot articulate themselves.  Everyone does fine when the questions are fill-in-the-blank or true/false, but once they turn to the second page and find short answer questions the require an explanation of concepts they just freeze or give up or their lack of real understanding is exposed.  So many of the quizzes just had completely blank second pages, despite that we’ve been talking about the topics for a week and a half now, with homework and classwork and labs and examples and all that produces is a question mark where your response should be?  I told the students as much…not in an accusatory way, since the blame may very well fall on me, but I stressed to them that explaining one’s self is important.  When little kids ask questions about the world, they don’t frame them as multiple choice, they say “Why is the sky blue?” and that sort of question demands some comprehension of what’s going on.

So, we put on the brakes and spent Thursday and Friday re-reviewing the last unit and the students will retake the quiz tomorrow.  I think the kids enjoy me and my class, but we can’t be satisfied with just getting by.  The whole reason I’m in this slot is to help everybody improve…otherwise, they could be not learning bio under some other teacher.