Shariffah Reflection 5 - The Detriments of Having the Same Formative Assessment for Express and Normal Academic Students

a. Focus on a specific assessment task in your school. Describe the assessment and discuss its effectiveness.

The Detriments of Having the Same Formative Assessment for Express and Normal Academic Students

While we believe that Literature is a subject accessible to both NA and Express students because of the thematic relevance of human struggles, using the same essay and passage-based tests for both streams will also become a very big human struggle for NA students.

The class that I am currently teaching is a Sec 3 combined class from two Normal Academic classes. Within the class itself, I have students who annotate and highlight everything without knowing why each quote is significant, some who highlight only words they do not understand (and since it's Shakespeare, that sums up to a hefty bit), some who bring the book to class but refuse to refer to it or take notes, and two students who do not even bring the book at all; one because he is brilliant and either sleeps or asks me weird questions, and the other because he finds Literature extremely difficult and demoralising. Using the same test paper for this class already gives a range of problems, starting with do some of them even know what the passage is about? Imagine the problems if they were given the same test paper that an Express class is taking - how do they even start?

In lower secondary, Literature for them was merely a simple understanding of characterisation and why people in books do the things they do. There is no study of literary technique as far as I know, and because of the MEDAL/ Combined Arts programme, Literature only gets about 3-6 months of air time a year for two years in lower sec. The point is, many students take up Literature not knowing what exactly is in store and thinking it to be a subject with no right or wrong answer and where they merely need to do a decent character study to pass.

Just yesterday I was teaching the class about answering author's technique essay questions using simpler questions like, "How does Shakespeare use imagery to show that Romeo is deeply in love with Juliet in Act One Scene Five?" When I demonstrated annotating the text on the board, I was half-surprised and half-worried to see so many students copying furiously what I had written. The impression I got was that they know this is important, but they have yet to understand why. Apart from memorising the quotes for the test and regurgitating, I do not know how else they can prepare for any test since they do not yet have the skills to link and weigh the importance of whatever they highlight. In fact, my suspicions were confirmed when I asked the class what imagery was and they hesitated. They suddenly became so quiet. I could almost hear them think, "Oh God, what is imagery?" When I listed "Language" and "Imagery" on the board, and I wrote down "diction" under Language, some asked me, "Cher, what is diction?" - so i changed it to choice of words - still cricket sounds in the background - so I explained it to them. Some of their expressions cleared, luckily. Then, when I went on to imagery, I began writing, "metaphor", and they very eagerly added on as I wrote, "simile, personification, oxymoron." So sad that they want to perform but do not know how. They know some of the broad terms, but have no idea how to identify it in a text, or why these techniques are significant at all. My heart went out to them because I realised that the foundation and knowledge of literary techniques for them is very weak. I gave them two simple quotes from the text about the use of light and dark imagery. I had just explained to them how to analyse it earlier and demo-ed doing a PEER paragraph. Later, I asked them if they could do a very simple PEER paragraph for me based on these two quotes of imagery from the text, but a most of them just gave me blur-sotong faces and one girl looked at me and honestly said she could not.

If this is the reality, and has been for some time in this school, I am seriously questioning the fairness of giving the same test for Express and NA students, whether it is for simple class or common tests or, worst case scenario, Mid-Years. Express students have a familiarity with language that most NA students do not. They can pick up things very fast; in fact the mention of a single word can get their brain juices flowing. They can discover things for themselves, teachers only need to prompt them and mediate here and there. But for NA students, this is really unfair.

I am supposed to cover all of Act Two before Mid-Years. I am strongly against this because I think there is no use covering the content if the students cannot pick out why each quote is significant. Knowing the plot is not enough, ultimately the exam question will not ask them to narrate the play. I think a focus on skills and technique would be better, so that they can read the book even in their own time and already have this instinct on what to highlight. So I am quite confused as to what I should teach at this point, since even if I go on with Act Two it would be like bulldozing a field of pretty lavender flowers that is just trying so hard to survive. I am tempted to teach them how to identify imagery and its effect like how we do in lower sec for the next lesson. In fact, I am thinking if the tests for NA students in the school should not even emulate O-Level passages yet, but be about identifying and analysing literary techniques using shorter, very simple texts where the techniques are very obvious just to teach them the skills first.

I do not know if the school moderates the matter by using a different answer scheme for NA students. Even so, I think the expectations for the quality of answers should be the same, but the questions need to be simpler so that students actually know what the question is asking for in the first place. I mean, what is the point of asking a chef and a novice to make a cake with the same ingredients, and then saying to the novice, "It is okay for you to make a lousy cake." If I were the novice I would feel sad and unmotivated. Rather, they both need to make good cakes, but the novice should have less ingredients than the chef so that it does not overwhelm him.

Formative assessments are integral to learning. For students in Singapore, it is the finish line that many work towards. Quite possibly, using a different formative assessment question for Express and NA students will better them both in the long run. Using the same formative assessment and differentiating the expectations for both is not enough, as NA students are too weak to digest the heavy content in a question that Express students would probably find manageable. In other words, an in-between passage does not really benefit either. The challenge would be to adapt the text and the question such that both NA and Express students can both understand what the question is asking for, and excel at it gradually. Like I've hinted earlier, NA students need a lot of confidence building. Using a test that is too difficult deviates against this and they will always feel like they have to catch up to something. Hence, using different formative assessment passage-based and essay questions would be better, short and long-term.