My First Final Exams!

No the exams are not for me.  I developed two Term III final exams for Form I (Freshmen) and Form II (Sophomore) Chemistry.  My Deaf Ed coordinator in our Pre-Service Training (PST) informed Davin and me that we would develop final exams, give them out, and grade them. Davin and I are the only ones in our group that teaches in the secondary education while the rest of my group teach Primary education.

So, last Thursday I was given Form I and II Chemistry text books (very thin and they contain the curriculum for the whole year), a note from a teacher indicating what page to start from, and what page to end to, sample exam used previously, and two student exercise books (which are pretty much about to crumble).

So my journey toward the examination are eye-opening but yet not that surprising.  Its more of "seeing it for myself" than "believing what others say" kind of enlightenment.

There were only like 15 to 20 pages in both Form I and II that they are to be tested -- the material that were supposed to be covered for the entire Term III (two months or so).  So, thinking, with such a little amount of material to study, the questions and their answers should be simple and straightforward.  

So I developed questions that are straight from the text books, and some questions are simple.  I did realize its hard to test if I was not the one who taught the context.  

My Form I and II Chemistry exams.  Both are two pages (front/back), Form I had 10 questions while Form II had 12 questions.  Some questions have maybe 1 to 3 parts (like A, B, and C).

I was also told to come to Machakos Secondary School for the Deaf at 10am yesterday (Saturday).  I was a little perplexed that the class have to meet on a Saturday and do my exam.  But later I learned that  there are other teachers who made them take their exams yesterday as well so that the teachers can do other plans on Monday.  Furthermore I learned that my exam was "practice exam" and that the scores do not count.  So I am double-perplexed for them to make the students take two exams, especially when mine was on a Saturday when they could be playing football (soccer) and volleyball.  Oh well.

Anyway, I came to the school at 9:45am promptly and chatted with the students for a while.  But by 10am all students went to their classrooms to wait for their teachers politely.  I went to the teachers' staff room and waited there until 10:45am.  I have heard often that teachers are not prompt and are often late,  but not "late according to our standards" but "late according to Kenya's standards".  So I experienced it first hand.

Finally she came, and simply allowed me to enter the classroom and start doing my thing.  Its quite an experience to see how classroom culture here is different than what you see in America.  All students are very respectful.  They were very serious and focused on their exam.

Form I (Freshmen) taking my Chemistry Term III Final Exam

They look focused and serious about the exam eh?

Later on, in a different classroom, I gave out Form II exams to these students.

Form II (Sophmore) taking my Chemistry exam as well.  

After they were done, I chatted with them some more, and I learned some things that made me feel bad about the exams I developed.  First, they do not even have the textbooks.  They said for Chemistry, they have only one or two, and sometimes they are shared by the class, or not.  So, some questions I used for the exam was from the textbook, so there are several questions where they simply haven't clue how to answer because they never saw them.  Secondly, in their exercise books, they pretty much copied the text from the textbook that their teacher wrote on the blackboard.  Of course the teacher would not write the whole textbook, so they missed out so much knowledge and examples that exist in a textbook.  So, had I known that, I would have tested them using their student exercise books so I know exactly what they were taught, but then, how would I know they understood them when they were simply copying text into their books.

Second eye-opener -- as you see in the picture below, Kenya has a different grade scale.  If you get only 75% correct, you receive an A.  In America, you have to have something like 90% to get the same grade letter.  Furthermore, if you only get the entire exam half right (50%), you earn a C while in America, you simply would have failed.

So, comparing grades between American and Kenyan children is like comparing Apples and Oranges.  Also if a student actually aced an exam with something like 90%, the kid would not be noticed as s/he would be grouped with others that earned A by getting their exams at least 75% correct.

Kenyan's Grade Scale -- notice that earning at least 75% gets you the best letter grade A while earning only half correct (50%) gets you a C.  This is not just for the deaf schools, but all schools in Kenya.  So, we cannot compare grade scores with American kids, since they have to earn at least 90% not 75% to get an A.

So, for Form I class, only one kid got 81% while everyone else fell below 75%.  One interesting observation I had for Form I was that the girls in the class performed better.  Five girls were in the top six.  I was under the impression that girls in Kenya tend to perform poorly when compared to boys due to their culture and responsibilities (with their families, not at school which tend to treat both sexes equally).  But then, this is only one exam with one class and of course cannot be generalized across other classes and across schools in Kenya.

Form I Exam results. Column from left to right: Number students, earned marks out of max marks, percent, letter grade, number of girls in that group, at bottom on left shows class average, and bottom on right shows average for girls, and average for boys.

I believe if I had an opportunity to do an experiment -- where I would do the SAME exam on SAME class, but I sign the questions (not give answers of course) in KSL, they would have scored better.  I also am confident that if I (not being egomaniac here, but any fluent KSL teacher with positive attitude) taught the class myself on this same context, I think I can bet my Harley that they would have scored much better.  

More on this stuff later when I am situated in my own school site for the next two years.  I look forward to start teaching.  I will be moving into my new (old) home on or around December 15th, but the first school term of 2013 starts sometime in January 2013. 

Hakuna Matata!