How to Manage Test Retakes [Episode 230]

Rebecca Joyner [00:00:00]:
All right, it’s been a hot minute since we’ve had a hot button kind of topic covered on the podcast. And so we’re going to do that today. We’re going to talk about test retakes and how to manage them. So some of you listening are in a situation where you are being required to do unlimited test retakes. Others, if you are in a situation where maybe it’s required, but your school has a very strict policy in terms of how you implement them. Some of you are just told you got to do retakes, but you got to manage how to do that. And it’s a lot. The writing of the new test, the figuring out when they’re coming in, it’s a big burden on the teacher.

Rebecca Joyner [00:00:34]:
Others of you listening are super anti test retakes and can’t imagine how I could have anything positive to say about them. And then, of course, there’s some of you listening who are like, hey, I kind of thought about doing it, but I don’t really know how. So however you are coming to this podcast episode, I’m grateful that you’re listening and I’m excited to talk about this topic. So I have so much to share. Okay, we’re going to talk about the pros and cons of test retakes. Because with any, you know, kind of controversial topic, if you will, it’s not black and white. There are pros and cons. So we’re going to discuss those.

Rebecca Joyner [00:01:08]:
I’m going to share what I kind of always did in the past. If my students failed a test, then I’m going to share how I would handle test retakes if I felt like I needed to do them, but it wasn’t a requirement, then I’ll share how to handle test retakes. If you are being required to do them and you’re navigating maybe some guidelines or some requirements from up top that you have to implement on top of your own management of your sanity. And then I’m really excited because to end the episode, I’m going to share some test retake suggestions from my audience. So oftentimes I’ll go on my Instagram stories and say, hey, I’m going to talk about something on the podcast. If you have a strong opinion about or if you’ve done something around this topic, I’d love to hear from you. And I get like one or two responses this time. I got so many good ones and so I kind of narrowed it down and I have about seven or eight.

Rebecca Joyner [00:01:57]:
I think that I’M going to share. I can’t remember the exact number, but I have a lot of good suggestions I’m going to share from other people’s voices and how they’re doing them and how it works in their classrooms. And I think it’s really interesting to hear from people that aren’t just me. So I’m going to share those at the end of the episode, and I think it’ll be a good one. So without further ado, let’s just dive in. This is Secondary Science Simplified, a podcast for secondary science teachers who want to engage their students and simplify their lives. I’m Rebecca Joyner from It’s Not Rocket Science. As a high school science teacher turned curriculum writer, I am passionate about helping other science teachers, love their jobs, serve their students, and do it all in only 40 hours a week.

Rebecca Joyner [00:02:38]:
Are you ready to rock the time you spend in your classroom and actually have a life outside of it? You are in the right place, teacher friend. Let’s get to today’s episode. Okay, let’s start off positive and let’s talk about the pros of test retakes. I love the concept of a test retake because of mastery. Like, if we’re really trying to assess and grade students on the mastery of their content or the mastery of the skills, in an ideal world, their grades perfectly reflect their understanding and mastery. And they don’t, like, just reflect effort. They aren’t getting punished for behavior or having a bad test. Like, in my opinion, in a perfect world, every class would be pass fail.

Rebecca Joyner [00:03:26]:
The problem is students aren’t really motivated by that. And it can be tricky. But that would be like, to me, ideal mastery would be like, it’s pass fail. I have all the time and energy in the world to keep reteaching, keep allowing them to retake until we get to the point that they really understand it. But unfortunately, we’re not in an ideal world. But there are pros to it. Like, if we genuinely say that we care about students learning and that’s the number one priority, then we would make a way for the test retakes. Now, the cons, of course, is that it’s a nightmare from a grading perspective.

Rebecca Joyner [00:04:01]:
Like I’ve even found in the past. Like, even notation in the grade book for parents can be tricky because if they’re not constantly checking the grade book, they may say like, well, my kid makes 90s on every test and it’s like, well, that was their third or fourth try. So like, even just doing that, it’s the time to go into that, it’s the time to write the retest, to decide if it’s fair. I do think that in general especially, I mean, with all ages of children, I find it with my own children who are 4, 6, and 8. But even with high schoolers, like natural consequences tend to be the best in terms of learning from our choices. And so if your students do not prepare for a test, they don’t take it seriously. A natural consequence is them not doing well on the test. And so if we’re always allowing retakes, that removes that natural consequence.

Rebecca Joyner [00:04:48]:
I also think, you know, if we’re constantly allowing retakes, I, I question, okay, now is this a summative assessment or now is it a formative assessment? And so then that kind of makes me question, okay, assessment as a gen in general, assessment as a whole, like, I don’t know, I think it just brings up a lot of deeper questions here. And that’s why it’s such a debate, I think, you know, nowadays, classwork, homework, a lot of those things can already be not accurate assessments because of AI and students using all these tools at their fingertips. So sometimes it feels like the summative assessment is all we have to really see what do they really know. And so again, if we’re allowing all of these retakes, are we really understanding what they know? And then I think the greatest con, in my opinion of the retake is if it’s set up in a way that the teacher’s having to do more work and the student doesn’t, if it’s a more of a burden on the teacher than the student to do this retake, that’s when I feel like that’s the biggest con of retakes in general. So for me, for the retake to be successful and to not just help students grades, but really help their mastery and also not remove the natural consequence of doing poorly on a test they didn’t prepare for, the natural consequence then is them having to take the initiative to make it right. Then that to me is the best case scenario when it comes to navigating retake. So that’s kind of some of the pros and cons around the topic. You may be listening to this and like shouting your comebacks at the speakers.

Rebecca Joyner [00:06:21]:
And I just, I know this is so nuanced. I could have done a whole series just on this topic, but I really wanted to make it one episode. So that’s just kind of like the overarching umbrella viewpoint of this. And oh, the other thing I’ll Say, in regards to retakes, this actually is not from me. This is from Heather Banana. She was actually on the podcast. I’ll link the episode I did with her in the show notes. But she DMed me about this because she talked about student mastery on the episode I did with her, episode 1 90.

Rebecca Joyner [00:06:46]:
And she does allow retakes. And kind of her perspective on this I thought was really interesting. I’m just gonna. I’m gonna read you what she sent me. She said, truly, since having kids of my own, I relate high school tests to spelling and multiplication tests at the elementary level. Right now, my daughter is learning the states. If she performs poorly on a test, maybe it’s because she was sick the week leading up to it and she couldn’t study. Life gets in the way, even for kids.

Rebecca Joyner [00:07:12]:
If I requested that she retests on the states, the teacher wouldn’t rearrange the map. They’d retest on exactly what they wanted my child to know in the first place. And I thought that was an interesting way to think of it. I think about my own child. One of my own children is a terrible speller, and his teacher has spelling tests, and he does not do well on them. And I’m gonna be honest. Like, spelling is not really something I feel like he can practice on his own at his age. Okay.

Rebecca Joyner [00:07:40]:
I feel like it’s something that we have to help him with. We have to drill him on. And. And I’m gonna be honest. We have three children, so some weeks, we cannot drill him every single day on his spelling words. You know, and so life gets in the way. Some. Some weeks one of his siblings is sick or I’m sick, or, you know, my husband’s been out of town, so I’ve been solo parenting.

Rebecca Joyner [00:07:58]:
Like, I don’t have time to drill him on his spelling words if he doesn’t do so hot on his spelling test. It’s not necessarily his fault. There were life things that came in the way. So if the. If the goal is for him to get better at spelling, I would hope that his teacher would allow him to retake his spelling test at a different time and keep working on it or that he. It wouldn’t just totally tank his grade. So I thought that was an interesting way to think about it when it comes to them taking retest. And, like, how would I want them to retake the test? Because in her opinion, she’s like, I’m not necessarily going to rewrite the test from scratch every time because that’s a huge burden.

Rebecca Joyner [00:08:31]:
So I thought that was an interesting way to think about it. Being a parent has definitely changed a lot of my policies in terms of how I think about these things as I’m experiencing them with my own children for the first time now. What have I personally done in the past when my students have failed the test? I have a whole episode on this episode 202. So I’m not going to recite all of that, but the first thing I always do is I look for trends. I see if, like, a lot of students miss the same content. I like to divide my tests by concept so that I can really narrow in on, like, did I just teach a concept poorly? I look to see if there’s ways that I can improve my practice. Maybe I just didn’t teach it well. I also look at data from the past to see is this an area where students have traditionally struggled? Like, it’s just hard content, like, stoichiometry is just hard.

Rebecca Joyner [00:09:15]:
So there’s just going to always kind of be a lower test average on this one. So I look at the data, I look for trends, I. I look at my own practice to see if I can improve it. And then I consider what is best for students grades and their future success in the course. Like, is this something that’s really affected their grades? I. Maybe I need to just allow test corrections for a grade that helps improve. Is this something they really need to learn? Like, they need to really master? Because they’re gonna really struggle in the future in this class if they don’t get it. Like, when it comes to chemical bonds and chemical reactions, in my opinion, they really need to understand that.

Rebecca Joyner [00:09:50]:
Cause, like, stoic’s gonna be hard. Solutions is gonna be hard States of matter. Athens. Like, everything else is gonna be hard if they don’t understand chemical bonds on a fundamental level. So that’s something where I’m like, we’re going to need to get mastery on this. I look to see, is it a whole class situation where we need to stop and reteach and then all retake, or is this more like. No, a good chunk of them got it. But others need to have a retake opportunity.

Rebecca Joyner [00:10:14]:
So I’m really doing a lot of data tracking and looking for trends as I’m trying to make an informed decision here on this. So that’s what I’m going to do. Listen to episode 202. If you want more about how I kind of handle that now, let’s say you are like, okay, we need to do a retest, and no one’s Forcing you to do this. So you can do this however you want. First thing I recommend is always having a clear set of expectations and guidelines. I think if you can set something from the beginning of the year and kind of have a policy on this, then it’s not a surprise for students. So really think, what’s the purpose of the retake? Is it for them to master or is it to improve their grade or is it really to do both? Typically it’s going to be for them to master the content.

Rebecca Joyner [00:10:59]:
So then I would have some sort of policy like, hey, if you want to do a retake, you have to attend tutoring once before you retake in order to be eligible. Okay. And that would be a great time to go through what they missed. I always had built in tutoring hours, three to 3:30 every day after school. I was always available during that time. Our school practices were not allowed to start till 3:30, 3:45. So students were able to attend tutoring. So that really, really helped.

Rebecca Joyner [00:11:25]:
But having a clear guideline of like, hey, if you want to schedule a retake, that’s fine, but you’re going to have to come get some help. We’re not just going to. It puts some of the burden back on them because that’s a huge goal for me as part of the natural consequence and that helps to alleviate students just not trying the first time because they know it’s going to be work to do the retest the second time. I also would like there to be no missing assignments from the unit if they’re going to retake because again, if the goal is mastery, I wanted you to do those assignments to master the content and to understand. So we’re going to need to go back and redo those assignments, even if it’s for like a 50% grade that’s better than a zero. And then you can come in and take the test. I would also have them come in during designated office hours or a designated retake time. Maybe it’s a situation where you’re like, hey, on Fridays or on Thursdays, I stay not just from 3 to 3:30, but 3 to 4.

Rebecca Joyner [00:12:16]:
And that’s when you can retake a test. That’s going to be when it is. I would also say it needs to be done before the end of the quarter or the end of the semester. So you’re. Because your grades get finalized. That also helps them not coming in in May and trying to retake a test from, you know, January or October, but giving them some kind of timelines on it. And some boundaries. And that’s for their own sake, because once you start moving on, then it’s even harder for them to relearn the stuff that they missed, y’.

Rebecca Joyner [00:12:44]:
All. So this is not just to, like, punish them and make this really hard on them. It’s to help them do things in a timely manner so they’re learning it before we’re moving on too much to other stuff. And I think the key here would really make sure they’re the ones taking the initiative and it’s on them. Do this. I would genuinely make a poster and have it laminated on my wall of like, hey, you want to retake a test? Awesome. Here’s how to do that. Make sure you have no zeros.

Rebecca Joyner [00:13:09]:
Come in for tutoring to get help before the retake, and then come in on a Thursday, because that’s when I have my retake hours to do it. And it’s gotta be done before the end of the quarter or if your quarter grades are flexible, before the end of the semester in order to be possible. And then they have to do it and they have to come and schedule it with you. I think about how great is that of a skill to train them in as an adult to take ownership and accountability for when they need to do something. Again saying, okay, you’re going to come in with your own calendar and you’re going to figure out when you need to do this and how we’re going to get better at this, and I’m going to help you do that. That is such a great skill and that can really help them. And of course, I’m talking to you guys as secondary science teachers. I would not expect my second grader to walk to his teacher and say, hey, I need help, and I’m going to bring my calendar here and have you help me schedule a retake.

Rebecca Joyner [00:14:03]:
Okay? But if you’re listening to this, I’m assuming you’re a secondary science teacher, you’re teaching high school students, maybe some of you are middle school. They can do this. They can schedule with them, and then you can report your policy and it can be in your syllabus and you can refer back to it if a parent’s asking for a retake. And then that’s where there’s built in grace. You can say, hey, you can always do a retake. But here’s kind of the parameters in which that’s going to be required. Again, this is putting the initiative back on them. All you have to do is be clear on the expectations on the front end and follow through with them.

Rebecca Joyner [00:14:35]:
I think from there, you make it as simple on yourself as possible. I mean, if they’re willing to do all that work I just listed, I would give them the same test again, I would give them the same exact test. If you want to swap it out, ways you can do that are to run your test, take your actual test and run it through like a ChatGPT or a Claude or magic school or whatever and say, hey, can you make me an alternative version of this test? Another way to do it, I think that’s great, is if you want to swap tests with another teacher in your department, say, hey, let’s work smarter, not harder. We’re testing on the same standards. Let’s give each other the test. And then that way we’re working together on this, I think is huge. There’s also some great recommendations from other teachers in my DMs. I’m going to share at the end, but I really want you to make this simple on you and not kill yourself.

Rebecca Joyner [00:15:25]:
And. And I genuinely think, kind of like Heather mentioned at the beginning, who cares if it’s the same test and they’re retaking it? Especially if it’s a quantitative test. You can just swap out the numbers pretty easily and it’s still the exact same skills. But then you’re not. You’re not trying to trick them, okay. You’re trying to see if they got to the mastery. And so who cares if it’s the same test? Now I do think making it not easy for them to want to do this so that they’ll actually will try on the front end is helpful. Again, you can make your next version harder with like, no multiple choice.

Rebecca Joyner [00:15:57]:
To me, that. That sucks from a grading perspective. So I want it to be as simple as possible for me. But that’s where I think the hard part for them is making them do the work to improve before they come back to you to take the retest. And then I think another option is not just replacing a test score, but averaging them is another. Another way you can do this so that they’re not just gonna get a 20% completely bomb the first one. They have to actually still try on the first one. Cause it’s gonna average with their second.

Rebecca Joyner [00:16:26]:
That’s another way that I would approach this. Okay, now what about for those of you listening who are being forced to do this, if your school policy is unlimited test retakes, I would be having a system like I just mentioned, where, okay, that’s fine, I’ll do it. But here’s the parameters in which I will do this. I would also immediately go to your admin and say this is an admin policy. What are the admin policies you’re going to put into place to help us navigate this? As a school, I love a school wide policy because then it’s the same across the board and you’re not just the mean teacher or the strict teacher or the hard teacher. But we’re all doing the same thing. If there’s no school wide policy, I would go to your admin and ask for one. If they’re saying you have to provide unlimited retakes.

Rebecca Joyner [00:17:15]:
Okay, how do you see it best for me to do this? How should I navigate this and have it be the same across the board? If there is no admin support and they’re not going to support you in this, go to other teachers in your school who are also under this expectation of unlimited retakes and see how they’re managing it and work together to put this into place. Work together to say how can we manage this as a team so that it’s not overwhelming on you to do it? Okay. That’s where I would maybe go and say, hey, all of us biology teachers, I’ll take the first two units, you take the next. Someone do like I’ll do biochem units. Someone do the genetics and heredity unit. Someone else do the kind of the macro units, ecology and evolution. I’ll be in charge of writing every test and retest for these. And then you can kind of batch it that way and then you can use each other and then you’re not all constantly writing a bunch of retests over and over again.

Rebecca Joyner [00:18:13]:
Or get together if it’s a district wide policy, get together with other teachers who teach what you teach in your district and say let’s, let’s collab, let’s share kind of how we’re managing this and share the test because that’s kind of one of the hardest parts here. Now one of the prompts I hear, one of the things I hear from you guys is I’ve been doing this for so many years. But now our districts change the standards based grading and we have to allow retake every assessment and they’re just not preparing on the front end so they don’t bother. And then all this time goes by and we’ve learned all this other stuff so they’re just getting further and further behind. We can’t mandate them to come to office hours. Parent contracts aren’t working. My students aren’t in the building in the morning so I can’t chase them down. Like, what do I do? Okay, that’s a lot there.

Rebecca Joyner [00:18:56]:
So that kind of situation that I’m hearing is not mandating office hours, not being allowed to mandate office hours. It’s insane. That’s where I would go to admin and say, when do you expect me in my contract hours to manage these retakes if I’m not allowed to tell them they have to come to certain times to do them? Like, when are they supposed to be doing them? To have unlimited retakes and not have admin support for when they’re going to do those retakes is kind of insane and incredibly unrealistic. And you need to go listen to episode 229 we did last week about unrealistic admin expectations for this teacher also to be saying, I can’t chase them down. Okay, you should absolutely not be chasing them down. This is on them. Okay? This is on them. They need to come to you if they want to have a retake.

Rebecca Joyner [00:19:46]:
You have to have a policy where you’re not going to chase them down. You’re going to support the student that comes to you. But that’s it. Episode 155. Active and Accountable learners. Listen to it. If their parents are complaining, you can say, hey, here’s the policy. I will do a retake over and over again.

Rebecca Joyner [00:20:02]:
I will take of my time to regrade it over and over again, but they have to come to me. I will not chase down your student. Period. Clearly communicate the expectations and the guidelines and the policy consistently reinforce. Let the natural consequences be what they may. If they wait three months to do the retest and they don’t remember anything, that’s on them and that is not on you. Hold the line. The grace is already there that you’re allowing the retake.

Rebecca Joyner [00:20:31]:
Not every part of the process has to be bending over backward to make it as easy as possible for them. Now, that’s all my opinions. That’s 20 minutes of my opinions and my rants. Now I want to share things from you guys that you submitted that’s worked well for you. So First, Tiffany from AP BioPenguins. She came on the podcast in episode 213. Absolutely. Go back and listen to her episode.

Rebecca Joyner [00:20:53]:
It was so great. Here’s what she said, which I thought was really good. Because let’s be honest, from an AP teacher’s perspective, they’re not going to do well on the test. Because if you’re writing the test using AP questions, they’re really hard and you’re probably having to curve your tests. And the goal here is definitely mastery because we want them to do well on the AP exam. So retakes make sense for an AP teacher for sure. Here’s what she said. She said, I have the students complete the support that was assigned before the examination.

Rebecca Joyner [00:21:21]:
Dynamic study modules from the textbook review games, plus additional practice questions from AP classroom and test corrections. The raw score from the retake will replace their original curved score. They have about three weeks to complete the tasks and do the retake. And so then I kind of asked her, I said, so are you rewriting the test? Like, how are you navigating that? She said, I personally do rewrite the retest. The original test has essay or like, you know, free response questions on it. And I’m not playing that game because let’s be real, y’ all know it’s hard to grade those FRQs over and over again. So for her, the retest is 50 question multiple choice exam. So that’s easy for her to grade.

Rebecca Joyner [00:22:01]:
She says, I pull missed questions from the original test and then questions from AP classroom and such that they use to prepare for it. They don’t know that’s what I do. So it benefits those who use the resources to appropriately prepare. I love that strategy of the retest just being a multiple choice question but not being curved. So if you curve your original say, hey, the retest is going to be a raw score and it’s just going to be multiple choice. I love that because there’s no partial credit on multiple choice. So that does make that a little bit more challenging on that end. So thank you, Tiffany for sharing that.

Rebecca Joyner [00:22:33]:
I’ll link her profile in the show notes. If you teach AP bio, you should absolutely be following her. Okay. Another suggestion from Rachel Wilson. I’ve been making them come in to go through their original test with me. That’s what I recommend too, during tutoring hours, then schedule a different time to take the retake. Also, I’ve been dividing the test up into learning targets. And in the gradebook, I put in the score for each learning target.

Rebecca Joyner [00:22:56]:
Then they only need to retake certain sections and not the entire test. So it’s less grading for me. I love this, especially if you use like it’s not rocket science resources, like especially the biology one. It’s the questions are divided by concept. Concepts 1, 2, 3. So it’s really easy to see like, okay, you passed, you got an 80% or above on concepts one and two, but you bombed concept three, like the cell cycle, mitosis and cancer. So we’re just going to retest on Concept 3. I absolutely love that.

Rebecca Joyner [00:23:27]:
And it makes it a lot simpler. So if you use my units, that’s already done for you. If you use physical science or chemistry or some of those others that it’s not labeled as concept 1, 2 or 3. The multiple choice are mixed, but the open response do go in order of the concept. So you can kind of draw a line as like, oh, between 23 and 24 is which the is when the question switched to being like a concept two question. And you can kind of see then which parts they really didn’t do well on and only retest on those. So I love that Rachel’s making sure that she’s not doing extra grading. She’s trying to minimize the extra grading as much as possible and she’s making them come in to go through it.

Rebecca Joyner [00:24:04]:
To me, that’s the most important part. Here’s a suggestion from bio with Mrs. Mac. I’m going to link her Instagram. In the show notes, she says she has a two test policy. On the first test, they take it like a normal test. The next day they take the very same test again, but this time with a partner in their notes. Okay, I take their two grades and I average them together to get their final grade.

Rebecca Joyner [00:24:31]:
They do not know what they make on either test until they’re done testing on day two. Okay, so you come in, you take your test on a Wednesday. The next day you’re going to take the test again. You have no idea what you did or did not get wrong on the first day, but you’re going to take it again with a partner in your notes. And then she’s going to average those two tests together. She partner students based on their first test scores. I like it and my kids like it too. They actually learn from each other and they understand right and wrong answers because they’re kind of discoursing with each other.

Rebecca Joyner [00:25:03]:
Also, before they take the second test, I do go over the top three missed questions as a whole group. I think this is a fascinating strategy if you want the goal to be mastery and understanding. But you don’t want to have to do a ton of like work outside of class to manage the retake. I think this is an excellent way to do this. And if they bomb the first one like that, they’re not trying at all for the first one. It kind of eliminates that problem because it’s going to be an average. So I think that’s really Interesting. I did ask her how she is pairing them, and I hadn’t heard back by the time I recorded this.

Rebecca Joyner [00:25:42]:
So that’s something worth potentially, if you want to DM her and ask, like, when you say you pair them based on their grades, are you putting like everyone who got a 60 together, or are you putting like a sick person who got a 60 with a person with a 90 together? I don’t know. I think it’d be interesting to hear her answer to that. But I think this is a really great way to kind of say, okay, I’m just gonna go ahead and proactively build in two test days for each test and I’m not going to rewrite the test and this is how we’re going to handle it. I think that’s a really interesting way to do it. Okay. Again, I mentioned at the beginning of this episode Heather Bonanno. I talked to her in episode 190 about retakes. I’m going to tell you what she kind of does for chemistry.

Rebecca Joyner [00:26:19]:
She said, so sometimes I look over a certain section they did poorly on and. And I just retest on that portion. If I use AI, if I need new questions, more often than not, students wait a long time to retest. And so I don’t need to change the questions at all. But I usually ask a tell me how you knew follow up. So, for example, if I had a VSEPR structure section where they had to know the names, I might give them the same shapes like on the retest. But instead of just saying tetrahedral in their answer, they would need to say tetrahedral because it has four electron domains that are all bonds. Or I’ll change a multiple choice question they missed into a short answer question.

Rebecca Joyner [00:26:58]:
And then she kind of went on to say, you know what I told you at the beginning about, like, her experiences seeing it differently now that she’s had her own students. Now, she did say, yes. High schoolers can be sneakier, and we can think they’re going to take advantage and cheat or just get a low score because they’ll plan a retest. But I’ve learned that it’s just not the case in general. They tend to come in on their own time and set it up. Only my top kids are usually doing that. And if it won’t change their overall class grade, they often say, oh, never mind, my grade’s fine. For kids with IEPs or accommodations, I’m more involved in facilitating the retakes.

Rebecca Joyner [00:27:31]:
So I love this option of saying, okay, we’re Only going to retest on what you missed and I’m just going to slightly tweak it and that’s going to decrease how much you’re going to have to grade as well because you’re only going to retest on those few things. Okay. This is a suggestion from Jordan. Oh, she actually taught at a school that I previously taught in after me though. And so but we have like similar context for what teaching in that school was like under those admin. And then since then she’s moved to a charter school and it’s been a totally different experience. So it was really interesting dialoguing with her just because I have context for her previous teaching experience and how it contrasts with where she is now. So she said my current school is a charter school that focuses on mastery learning and by the laws of the charter, retesting is allowed for students who make below an 80.

Rebecca Joyner [00:28:18]:
Because I use your curriculum for bio and anatomy, retesting is so easy. Okay. So she uses it’s on rocket science, biology and anatomy. She said, I give the students the A version if they first took the B test and vice versa. So if you didn’t know this, all my tests come in A and B versions where the multiple choice are rearranged. She said, in my first two years I hated the retesting policy and gave the students the honors version of the test so that it was harder. It didn’t fare well for the students or me. So that’s when I began to utilize, just using the opposite, the AB version.

Rebecca Joyner [00:28:46]:
A policy I have for students who make grades above a 70 is that they can do corrections. Students are required to attend some kind of tutoring or offer hour session to review the poorly taken test. This is what I find so cool, y’. All. My school has a designated retesting day. It’s Friday afternoons at 1:30. That makes it easier on teachers and planning. Teachers typically have Friday work time or faculty meetings after school and our resident sub is the proctor for all retesting.

Rebecca Joyner [00:29:16]:
So she said this is so awesome because students don’t want to stay late on Friday. They want to leave at 1:30. So this will prevent them from wanting to have to do the retest. So that’s a natural consequence built in. They don’t want to do that. But isn’t that awesome? I want you to share this suggestion with your admin. If you have a school where retesting is required and say hey, the bell rings at 1:30. And then if students ride the bus, obviously the bus wouldn’t pick Them up till three like a normal day.

Rebecca Joyner [00:29:46]:
But that, that could just be where they go to office hours, they go to tutoring, they have a retest, whatever. Like, what a cool way to build in support for students. Like, that is just awesome. To help them get to mastery. So I absolutely loved her perspective on that. Okay, a few more from other teachers. Justina said, for retakes, school policy states that students have one week to complete test corrections in my classroom and then schedule their retake. No corrections, no retake.

Rebecca Joyner [00:30:13]:
We typically require the retake to be done in that same week time frame, but we’ll extend it if necessary. For athletes absences, et cetera. We’re asked to make the retake more challenging. So I will do the following. Any multiple choice question gets turned into a short answer question, and if a word bank’s given, I’ll just remove it for the retake. Students have the ability to earn full credit on the retake. We replace the original grade if the retake is higher. We keep the original score if the retake was lower.

Rebecca Joyner [00:30:38]:
Again, I love this, because what did you guys hear? There’s a school policy. I absolutely love that. And I love that, hey, you need to come in and do corrections before you take the retest. I just love that we’re putting that on the students to kind of do that and to make it up within one week. Because y’ all know, like, if they wait a long time, they’re just not gonna remember. And like we said, like, if I need them to master chemical bonds before we get too far into chemical reactions, like, we need to do this quickly, because if not, then come the chemical reactions test. You still don’t understand a chemical bond. You’re not gonna understand chemical reactions.

Rebecca Joyner [00:31:10]:
You know what I’m saying? Okay, three more. Lynn says I teach ninth grade introductory physical science in Michigan, and we don’t do retakes. However, we do grade replacements. We basically take each unit test given to them throughout the semester. We use the same test for their midterms and final, and if they score better, we go back to that unit test and replace the grade. I love this, and this is kind of something that I love to do. This is something I did especially when I missed a quarter of my students learning. Because I was on maternity leave, I always write my midterm and final exams using old test questions.

Rebecca Joyner [00:31:45]:
I do that on purpose. And if you’ve bought my exam packs in my store, I have them for biology, anatomy, physical science, chemistry. I’ve had one or two people write a review and Be like, I really liked this, but I wish the questions were different from the unit tests. And I’ve responded and said like, no, that that was like an intentional choice. I intentionally reuse the questions because I want it to be an opportunity for them to go back, look at their old tests, learn from what they missed, and do better on the midterm. And my midterms and final exams are divided up by the test. And then that way it’s really easy to see like, oh, you did much better on this section and go back and replace the grade. So I think that’s a great way to do it too.

Rebecca Joyner [00:32:24]:
To encourage students to learn it by the midterm or final, have it be low lift, if you will, in terms of what you’re required to do. Then it makes your midterms and finals really easy to write because you’re just pulling questions from old tests. Highly recommend that. I really like that. Okay, this suggestion came from the mathematical mama. She is a middle school math teacher. She might be math and science, but she did send this. And so I want to share in case it is helpful, even though it’s not necessarily the same demographic of most of you listening.

Rebecca Joyner [00:32:52]:
I’ll link her Instagram in the show notes if you want to DM her and ask for follow up questions. They do online tests and retests. And so I asked if they had a software for that because she said there’s like videos where they can watch to learn the skill that they missed. And she said they did have those, but they also did write their own questions. And she said the way that they manage this is just sharing the load. She said there are three other teachers who teach what I teach. And so we’re all working together to write the questions. And so I just wanted to share that tip because that’s what I said earlier.

Rebecca Joyner [00:33:20]:
Like, really y’? All, if you are not the only person in school, your school teaching what you teach, like share the burn on this and work together to like share questions and things like that. It’s really so helpful. And then last but not least, Brittany had the most unique approach I’ve heard, in my opinion. And so I really want to share it with you to kind of end this so that you can hear again another way to think about doing this. So she forms homogenous groups based on their score on the first test. So when she’s saying homogeneous, that tells me like, okay, all the people who got a D on the test are together, all the people got a C, et cetera. She uses the Same testing resources if applicable. The group retakes the test together by sharing ideas, checking each other’s work and coming to a consensus.

Rebecca Joyner [00:34:05]:
Everyone has their own color to initial their work, the original or the correction. They turn in and get one grade for the group that’s average with their original individual test score. So I followed up and asked a few follow up questions and she said this happens the next day. So the day after the test. I haven’t gone over anything with them, but then they’re together in that homogenous group. Students were allowed a note card on their original test, like a cheat sheet if you will. They get to use that and each other on the retest the next day. So this is kind of similar to what bio with Mrs.

Rebecca Joyner [00:34:36]:
Mac said. But I thought it had an interesting take on it with using the note card and then working together. And she clarified that they are in homogenous groups. So groups of students that did similarly as themselves. And so then they’re working together on that retest. I really like this idea. I like just kind of front loading it on the front end to work together and get that mastery. And then I like that.

Rebecca Joyner [00:34:56]:
Hopefully then you’ve seen after that second that we’ve really understood it and now we can truly move on in the material and know that people got to where they needed to be to do well in subsequent material. So that was a lot. I hope it helped you though. My take home challenge would be to see what others in your department are doing and to work together. See if you can come together with a school wide policy and if not, come up with your own policy for this and kind of publish it for parents and students so that it’s clear and that you can implement it moving forward with the least amount of drama possible. And I’ll link in the show notes all those different people who I referenced who have their own Instagram accounts so you can DM them directly. Then I’ll link episodes 190 and 213 that had Heather and Tiffany on them if you want to listen to what they’ve kind of shared on that in the past. I’ll also link some episodes I’ve done about like motivating unmotivated students and creating active and accountable learners if that’s something you kind of struggle with.

Rebecca Joyner [00:35:50]:
So I know that was a deep dive, but I really hope this helps. And if you want to check out any of those show notes, head to istanrocket scienceclassroom.com Episode 230 and you can find all the links I mentioned. All right. Teacher Friends. That wraps up today’s episode. If you’re looking for an easy way to start simplifying your life as a secondary science teacher, head to itsnotrocketscienceclassroom.com challenge to grab your classroom reset challenge. And guess what? It’s totally free. Free.

Rebecca Joyner [00:36:20]:
Thanks so much for tuning in, and I’ll see you here next week. Until then, I’ll be rooting for you, teacher Friend.