There is less pressure, stress, and anxiety when students have another opportunity. If the kid fails to retake something when they had the opportunity, parents are mad at their child, not you.Ĥ. There is actually less pressure on the teacher because students can improve their learning and mastery.the pressure becomes more on the learner than the teacher. Why would they care about the material if they couldn't get better at it? How can you stay motivated if you can never recover for the rest of the grading period because of a bad test? Allowing students to retake things stresses that you are promoting a growth mindset.ģ. They are accountable for the material and don't get an easy way out.Ģ. Isn't the chance to do things over, explore, see progress, and take risks a big draw to playing video games in the first place? How fun would a video game be if you bought it and you were only allowed to lose once? Would you get better and eventually master that game? Would you be motivated to buy another game? Maybe education should be more like a Nintendo game.Īllowing retakes means MORE accountability for studentsġ. A grade is what you know and your most current understanding of material. They both mastered the material and have a similar understanding, one student just knew it quicker. I collected the “graded” quizzes back from the students to keep in my files for the rest of the year.Does it feel unfair giving the same grade to a student who mastered material the first time versus one who had to retake it? Does a student who retook something have less knowledge than a student who mastered it the first time? I would argue no. Kids do get weirded out by my lucky guesses, though.

Some students are really tricky with their questions, and I frequently get 0 questions right on a students quiz. They are always sure to let me know just how well or how badly I did. Students love grading my answers with markers or highlighters. I take each student’s quiz after school on the first day and return them first thing on the second day.

Warning – it always takes students a lot more time to write questions about themselves than you would expect! If you are trying to fit a lot into the first day of school, I would only have students write four questions about themselves. Last year’s students thought it super unfair that my quiz was free response while the quiz they were writing for me was multiple choice. Afterwards, I give students a chance to write a quiz about themselves for me to take. I usually give students around five minutes to complete the quiz.

Math mindset quiz