Finally, our midterm is done and now I can breathe well. Our first semester is not over yet and it's draining because all our subjects are major subjects. Meaning to say we have to take them seriously and we have a cut-off grade in our course. If you will get a final grade of 2.5 and below, you have to retake the subject. Of course, we have to take this seriously because we are future educators and our transcript of records really matters. Our subjects for this semester are heavy and most of them are literature subjects which I really like. We have a Literary Criticism, Survey of Afro-Asian Literature, Contemporary and Popular Literature, and Survey of English and American Literature. We also have Technical Writing, Assessment in Learning I, Teaching for Technology and Learning I, Special Education, and the heaviest among all is Language Research.
All of the subjects I mentioned require a lot of time and attention. In our Assessment in Learning, we have to make a Table of Specification also known as TOS using Bloom's Taxonomy of Learning. This is our guide in creating a test questionnaire and we have to follow the taxonomy where the 6 levels of the cognitive domain should be balanced: Remembering, Understanding, Applying, Analyzing, Evaluating, and Creating. The most tiring and time-consuming of all is the crafting of 50-item multiple-choice questions. It must be based on your created TOS. Now I realized being a teacher is really not easy considering that you have to be mindful of the questions you create in your exams.
Thanks to my classmate for treating me with a Mocha latte iced coffee, it made my day. Even though it's a bit stressful to create a TOS, I still take the time to relax. I doubt the questions I created in my questionnaire but it's okay, I'm still following Bloom's Taxonomy, anyways we don't have to worry a lot about it because in our finals we will be doing an item analysis and we will be conducting an outside campus activity where we will distribute our questionnaires to the high school students. It's kinda exciting and nerve-wracking at the same time.
I also want to share how our research proposal for the Language Research has gone so far. We passed our proposal with a minor revision. We have to revise our research title since we have two studies found in our title. We have to eliminate the word 'Interplay' and focus on the 'Influence.' We also have to select and focus on one theoretical framework and update our citations. We have to specify our target population and we still have to do a pilot-testing since our questionnaires are researchers made.
But before we can totally conduct pilot testing, we still have to correct our minor revisions and submit them to our panellists. After that, we can submit a letter of conduct asking permission to do a pilot-testing survey on the campus. We only have two months left before we defend our research but for now, we have to focus on conducting the survey first.
This is my printed TOS but that's not final yet. Based on what our instructor said, we have to make 60% of items in the remembering and understanding and the rest is 40%. We should not make a lot of items under the creating cognitive domain. Are you wondering why? It is because test items should not be very difficult for high school students especially since I'm assigned with the Grade 7 level. The remembering, understanding, and applying belong to the Lower Order Thinking Skills (LOTS) while the Analyzing, Evaluating, and Creating belongs to the Higher Order Thinking Skills (HOTS).
Since the goal is to let every student pass the exam, we have to focus on the LOTS, especially in the lower grade level. If all our students are like Einstein then for sure we can focus on the HOTS. It makes sense to me. We teachers should not make it very difficult for our students to pass the subject. We should not base our students' learning on a summative exam. In fact, I highly believe that it's not the real measurement of learning. The person who invented the exam even said that it should not be the basis of learning. I also think that it's a short-term learning that relies more on memorization. The summative exam is good for cognitive level only if the student has comprehended and learned the lesson by heart but if the student has only memorized it, that's only a very fragile learning and will be forgotten.
I am the kind of learner who hates memorization instead I learn based on comprehension and realization. Whenever I answer an objective type of question, I tend to get low scores. However, if I am asked to speak in front of the class, there's a lot I can say. I am good at comprehending things but not memorizing. This is why I always think that when I become a teacher one day, I want my students to learn by the heart because that is permanent learning. I'd rather not let my students memorize a lot of words they barely understand at all. For me, that's a waste of time.
Learning is fun and as they say, learning never stops. In fact, we keep on learning in life. I love being a student and I'm always a good listener in class. When I say listener, I am referring to the things that I learned at school by heart. I would love to teach and inspire others the right way. I have been learning my whole life and I want my students one day to learn the way I learned too. I want them to have a love for learning and to realized that it's more than learning, it can make you a better person in this world. I also want to end the blog with my favorite quote from Aristotle, "Educating the mind without educating the heart is no education at all."
Thank you for reading. All photos are taken by me unless stated otherwise. 🌸