It’s the spring break edition of the Carnival of Education, hosted by So You Want To Teach. NYC Educator complains about mixed messages. Teachers are supposed to get tough! And pass everyone.
At first, we were told to get tough on latecomers. Fail them, and tell them you’re failing them because they were late to class. It was a surprising message.
But then, it was followed by a brainstorming session on how to pass as many kids as possible. One teacher suggested allowing the students to make up their own cheat sheets. From this teacher’s experience, making up the cheat sheets was an alternate mode of note-taking. And there was no doubt that students tended to get higher scores when they brought their sanctioned cheat sheets with them.
Dr. Seuss is the theme of the Carnival of Homeschooling, hosted by Janice Campbell.
My students have notes on their private, personal websites, and we take most of our tests in class. They could click over to their notes during the test, if they wanted to do so. I’ve never said they couldn’t do it.
Strangely, I’ve never spotted a kid “cheating.” I think I’d applaud the ingenuity.
The sanctioned cheat sheet is an old teacher trick–and a pretty good one.
Tell students they can put notes on as 5×7 notecard and some of them will spend hours organizing the data so they can fit as much as possible.
Teachers who have done this report that students learn the material so well that they don’t even glance at the “cheat sheets” during the test.
It’s a great way to teach the value of note taking.
Take notes well enough and you won’t have to “cheat.”