Trying out Google Calendar’s new ‘Appointment Schedule’ feature for ‘Oral Test Revisions’

Six weeks ago, right near the end of Q3, I gave my Algebra II students a test on Polynomials. Since they were taking it close to when Q3 grades would be due, I knew there wouldn’t be enough time for me to grade them and then offer 2-3 weeks of revisions before the end of term. I told them that there would be no revisions on this test (typically all tests in my classes can be revised after school for half points back and tests never leave my room). To make up for this, I allowed them to make a ‘cheat sheet’ reference sheet that they could use during the test.

Despite the no-revision warning and reference sheet, I found that some of my students performed worse than they were hoping and didn’t show a solid understanding of the topics. As I began grading all 70 of the tests, I realized that I would not get them all graded in time before Q3 grades closed, so I had to make them a Q4 test. I think I spent longer on this batch of tests than any other test this year - like, HOURS and HOURS, even spilling into our April break drive to and from Virginia. Once I accepted that the test couldn’t be put in Q3, it nullified the rationale to not hold revisions. However, I didn’t want to completely turn around and change my no-revision policy on the test, especially since I suspected that some of the lower grades were due to students not preparing enough or using the ‘check your understanding’ study materials that I posted.

After thinking about it for weeks, I finally decided to go back to something I tried during Covid remote teaching: having a live, oral assessment to measure student mastery of the content. I did this during Covid because I realized students were just copying and not learning or truly understanding anything. It took significantly more time than just a synchronous test, but at least I could truly get a sense of what students were able to do without copying, cheating, or rote memorization. I am going to try something similar now to accurately check for true student mastery. The Wall Street Journal published an article on oral exams last year and how they discourage cheating - read it HERE. Also read a professor’s opinion on the use of oral exams and response to the article:

BEFORE my students visit me for their oral assessment, I want to ensure they are prepared and won’t waste their time or my time. I created a test self-reflection document, which was inspired by what Tony Record puts at the end of his tests in AP Calculus, as can be seen in his Unit 9 Polar/Parametric test:

Self-reflection is something I do not incorporate enough in my classes, purely due to time constraints, but I plan on including this more next year during after-school test corrections. My self-reflection document has a space for students to write about each problem they missed any points on and then generally reflect on their overall performance.

It then suggests extra problems for each test problem they missed. I am not going to require them to do all of them, but I hope they will take advantage of them and use them to improve their skills. Knowing that they need to solve a new problem live at the whiteboard while explaining their steps will hopefully motivate them to properly prepare and practice.

Click the button below to view my PDF document of the test self-reflection, extra practice problems, and final answers.

Now that my two AP Calculus BC classes are essentially over and seniors are done in a week, my schedule both during the day and after school has opened up significantly. I can devote all of my extra-help time to my Algebra II students without needing to jump back and forth to the seniors. I needed a way for students to sign up for 15-minute time slots while also not double-booking with another classmate, so I went to my teacher friend, the AP Biology teacher at my school. She used Google Calendar’s new ‘appointment schedule’ feature to book 15-minute time slots with her students to go through their AP mock exams and discuss areas of improvement for the actual AP exam.

I visited her today to ask her how to set it up. I have really never explored Google Calendar or taken advantage of all its features because I am such a die-hard paper calendar and planner fan. It ended up being quick and intuitive. To start, I went to “Create” and chose "appointment schedule”:

Then I chose 15-minute time slots and created the available blocks of time for students to come to my room. It was very easy to personalize my weekly schedule, and I chose ‘repeat weekly,’ since I wanted this to apply to the next three weeks until June 6.

As I created my time blocks, Google Calendar immediately created a visual like this to help me picture my schedule:

Then I shared the sign-up link on my Google Classroom for students to access. My calendar currently looks like this, but as students fill out the form, their names will fill in. I chose the option to send reminders the day before as well as the hour before.

I’ll write another blog post next month discussing how this new process went!