Daily Quizzes in Schools

INTRODUCTION

        One of the greatest challenges facing educators today is that of engaging a wide and diverse group of students. Students come to the learning experience with varying degrees of motivation, commitment, ability, and learning styles or approaches. Due to the large numbers of students that teachers encounter everyday, they do not just teach their lesson with their  teaching styles  alone. Teachers  give follow up activity that would lead on determining how far they know about the lesson and how easy they absorb the lesson. Usually, teachers give a so called “quiz” as a set of quick questions designed to test knowledge.

One of the most important functions which a language instructor performs is the evaluation of students’ work, in terms both of ongoing progress and of the success achieved by students at the end of the contracted learning period. In every school, teachers give a quiz  to students not just because it is required, but because teacher used it to measure or examine what the students have learned. Daily quizzes are important because they are good indicators of student comprehension and instructor effectiveness. As long as the quizzes are short, focused on content and used for evaluative rather than grading purposes, they are one of the most effective formative assessment tools. Daily quizzes lose effectiveness when they are used simply for assigning points or grades to students but are not evaluated as an assessment of learning. Instruction improves when daily quizzes are used to drive teaching and learning. But of course, designing tests is an important part of assessing students understanding of course content and their level of competency in applying what they are learning. 

Interest in how to improve students learning is not new. It is generally assumed that quizzes are useful tools to enhance learning and consolidate what has been taught. Brown (2004) conceives of them as ―the information that washes back to students in the form of useful diagnoses of strengths and weaknesses. This influence of the test on the classroom can be either beneficial or harmful.

In one of the few published studies of frequent quizzing, Geist and Soehren (1997) reported on a study of dental students. They concluded that frequent quizzing had a beneficial and significant influence on student performance. They further found that the positive effects on performance increased as the number of quizzes increased. Thus they concluded that quizzes do matter for academic performance and teaching had an influential autonomous effect on learning.

         The term quiz has been subject to many different interpretations and definitions. Some define frequent testing as a kind of examination which is carried out weekly (Keys, 1934), others as a kind of assessment which is performed on a daily basis (Dineen, Taylor, & Stephens, 1989), while other researchers define it on a monthly basis (Kling, Miller, & Reardon, 2005).

Quiz is beneficial because through giving students frequent quizzes, schools can gain valuable information about how they are doing. Moreover, frequent testing can provide the school, teachers, parents, and students with useful feedback on student performance in the class (Bangert-Drowns et al., 1986; Standlee & Popham, 1960).

One of the other important advantages of frequent testing or quiz is that it creates extrinsic motivation for the students; since students want to obtain good grades in the course, they try hard and spend a lot of time preparing for the quizzes (Dustin, 1971). Another reason why frequent testing is beneficial to students‘ learning is that frequent testing covers small amounts of materials. Therefore, they are processed more deeply and meticulously (Standlee & Popham, 1960). Frequent quizzes also help the students to retain the material for longer period of time or make them ready for highstakes exams (Johnsom & Kiviniemi, 2009). Moreover, Selakovich (1962) believes that frequent testing even results in more classroom discussion of the content or material covered in the same class.

        The researchers in this study investigated the appropriateness of the quizzes taken by the students in English 7 subject of Rizal Experimental Station and Pilot School of Cottage Industries and whether the quizzes developed their knowledge and understanding of Philippine Literature and other text types.

STATEMENT OF THE PROBLEM

        The study aims to evaluate the sample quizzes gathered in English 7 given to Grade 7 students of Rizal Experimental Station and Pilot School of Cottage Industries during their first, second and third quarter of school year 2016-2017. The study intends to address the following research questions.

1. What are the general features of the quizzes?

2. Are the instructions clearly stated?

3. Are the quizzes aligned with the content standards of the subject?

4. How the levels of intellectual understanding of quizzes contribute to meet the objective of the subject?

RESEARCH METHODOLOGY

Design

The researchers utilized qualitative content analysis. Content analysis is the use of replicable and valid method for making specific inferences from text to other states or properties of its source" (Krippendorff 1969). Shannon (2005) defined qualitative content analysis as “a research method for the subjectivist interpretation of text and data through the systematic classification process of coding and identifying themes or patterns.”  The researchers then cautiously analyzed and evaluated the quizzes by comparing them to the aims of the subject in K-12 Curriculum Guide weather they achieve its objective or not.

Instrument

The eight sample quizzes gathered were used as the main instrument in the study. The number of items of the quizzes vary in 10 to 15 items.

The Data Gathering Procedure:

        In the conduct of the study, the researchers utilized the daily quizzes questionnaire in English 7 during the first, second, and third quarter of the school year 2016-2017. The researchers did not able to gather quizzes under fourth quarter because it still not taken by the current Grade 7 students.

        The questionnaires were borrowed from English Department of Rizal Experimental Station and Pilot School of Cottage Industries particular in Grade 7. The teacher gave the soft copies of the sample quizzes (since those samples are the only available) which are already taken by the student in each quarter.