I Made a Mistake

I can't believe I forgot to tell you this story. I gave my Journalism students a test last week. I was quite proud of myself. It was a fill-in-the-blank test with 30 questions on it and a word bank with 30 answers. If my students studied and listened on review day, I knew they were going to do great.

On test day, I handed out the test, and since I hadn't made an answer KEY yet, I thought it would be the perfect time to make it as my students took the test. I had my word bank beside me, so I started filling in the answers. After I filled in two or three answers, I realized that the answers were in order!!! Let me first explain that the day before, I had designed a game for the students to play. In order to save me some time and energy, the test was actually the game. But, I had forgotten to mix up the answers from the game.

So I looked at my students to see if anyone realized what I had done. I could see a few people smiling, and I knew they had figured out the pattern. Others were skipping questions and not doing the test in order. I didn't know what to do, so I just let them take the test. I figured this was a freebie for the entire 30 students.

Once everyone had the test turned in, I decided we'd grade the test in class (in order to save me more time and energy). I don't do this often. In fact, it was the first time I had done this, but I figured if everyone figured out the pattern, they had done okay on the test. One of the students raised her hand and said, "Ms. N. Did you know the answers were in order?"

I started to laugh. Another student said, "That's not very nice to do."
Another student said, "What? I didn't know the answers were in order!"
Another student said, "Sweet, I got 100%."
I explained to them that I didn't realize the answers were in order until I had already handed out the test. We graded the test together, and 25 out of 30 students realized the pattern and got 100%. The other five weren't as quick and didn't do so well on the test.

It was a first-year teacher mistake, and I'll never do that again. :)