Developing Great Social Studies Test Items

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Developing Great Social Studies Test Items

• Nancy Hester, RESC XIII
• nancy.hester_at_esc13.txed.net

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You should attempt to write these types of items
to include on every test

• Lower Level Easy (LLE)
• Lower Level Difficult (LLD)
• Higher Level Easy (HLE)
• Higher Level Difficult (HLD)

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United States History - LLE

• The policy of acquiring colonies and building
  empires is known as
• A. Isolationism
• B. Industrialism
• C. Anti-colonialism
• D. Imperialism

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United States History - LLD

• Which of the following would describe the foreign
  policy of the U.S. immediately after the
  Spanish-American War?
• A. Imperialism
• B. Isolationism
• C. Militarism
• D. Socialism

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United States History - HLE

• Which of the following actions by the U.S.
  Government would have been endorsed by
  imperialists?
• A. Building the Panama Canal
• B. Granting independence to the Philippine
  Islands
• C. Passing low protective tariffs
• D. Reducing military forces

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United States History - HLD

• Imperialism ________ Isolationism
  ________
• A. Spanish-American War Period 1920s
• B. Gilded Age WWI Period
• C. Spanish-American War WWI Period
• D. Gilded Age 1920s

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Plan Your Test

• 70 Easy to Medium
• 30 Difficult
• 50 Lower-Level Content
• 50 Higher-Level Content

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Test Specification Chart
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Examples of Higher Level Stems

• Which is an example of..
• Who would most likely have written (asked, said)
  followed by a quote
• Analogies
• Fill in the missing part of this graphic
  organizer
• Sequencing by Roman numeral
• Who would have been helped by (law, invention,
  organization, reform)

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Test Item Development

• Direct word associations in the stem and
  distracter
• Indirect word associations in the stem and
  distracter
• True, but doesnt fit the time period or
  specified geographic area
• True, but not true in this case doesnt answer
  this particular question
• Am I teaching and assessing in my classroom at
  the same level that is expected in the TEKS?

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Distracters

• Never make a distracter a throw-away
• If you use ALL, none, or except, do not
  capitalize, italicize or use bold face.
• Make all distracters parallel (verb phrases,
  nouns, proper nouns, etc.)
• Do not let one distracter stick out farther than
  others
• Do not repeat the same verbiage at the beginning
  of distracters. (They all had.They all had.)

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Distracters

• Be sure if you are asking for a generalization
  all of the distracters are, in fact,
  generalizations and not simple inferences or main
  ideas. This is true of all of the skills to be
  tested.
• Be sure there is not more than one plausible
  answer.
• Avoid Best Answer

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Distracters
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Distracters
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Skills Prompts

• Cause/Effect
• Why did/would.?
• If you removed..?
• Infer/Conclude
• The manufacturers must have..
• Summarize
• Which best describes..?

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Skills Prompts

• What do you see? What does it mean?

See
Mean
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(No Transcript)
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Skills Prompts

• Low-Level Map Skills
• Direction
• Key
• Location
• Identification of Physical Feature
• High-Level Map Skills
• Cause/Effect - Impact of above on lifestyle,
  work, climate, war, commerce, culture

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Skills Prompts

• High-Level Map Skills, contd.
• Develop general conclusions supported by details
  from the map (You can tell by looking at this
  map that it must be place because
• Main Ideas/Summaries break maps into parts
  Describe and infer about each part

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Skills Prompts

• Graphs, Charts and Data
• Simple to complex
• Comparisons (more, less, most, least)
• Conclusions/Generalizations (based on the data,
  you can tell that)
• Predict from trends (line graphs)
• Main Idea/Inference What do you think this
  graph is about?

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Skill Prompts

• Graphs, Charts, and Data, continued.
• Make justified decisions based on data (I would
  prefer to open a business in place because.)
• Connect cause/effect to trends or phenomena shown
• Transfer information from one form to another
  (chart to graph)

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Study Item Types

• Study samples of items to get ideas. Include
• Prompts
• Graphic Organizers
• Readings
• Direct Content Questions
• Do not try to use one type of item over and over.
  Vary the stems.

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Sources

• Jan Moberly, Director of Curriculum and
  Instruction, Region 10 ESC
• Kosovo War Crimes http//edweb.sdsu.edu/webquest
  .html
• National Archives and Records Administration
  http//www.nara.gov
• Library of Congress American Memories
  http//www.loc.gov/ammem
• Texas A M University Department of Education
  Empowerment Zone http//empowermentzone.tamu.edu
  /MA/viewinfo.html?id16