Hi Everyone,
Multiple choice questions have long been a staple of academic texts. Students need to be prepared for them, but they lack the challenge of higher order thinking questions. How can we add more rigor to multiple choice questions?
Community friend and language arts guru Anita Kerr provides an answer. She says, “Ask students to answer the multiple choice question. Then, here’s the simple addition that adds the rigor . . . Have students underline/identify the sentence in the text that confirms the answer choice is correct . . require students to underline, circle, or indicate the line number where they found the evidence to answer the question. If you do this regularly, students will start doing it automatically – it will become a habit of mind.”
Please share your thoughts. How have you used or adapted this technique? How do you use multiple choice questions to deepen student thinking?
Steve Schmidt, Moderator
LINCS Reading and Writing Group
Comments
Hi Steve! I'm glad you introduced this idea to the community. I have always struggled with the competing demands of how HSE/progress tests are structured, what students say they want to learn, and what our CCR Standards require in terms of rigor and DOK (depth of knowledge). It's a challenge to achieve the demands of our standards while at the same time getting students ready for a GED or CASAS test that is all or mostly multiple choice. This simple strategy you summarized here is simple but effective! We can use multiple choice questions and still require the use of evidence. I look forward to hearing ideas from other teachers!