I teach at the middle school level, and I'm currently trying to decide what day to give my cumulative quarterly exam. I was thinking I'd give it on a Monday, just because that's when we'd be finishing up the material. It's also a day when other teachers are not giving their tests, so the students wouldn't be overloaded. I don't know if this is a good idea though, because the students seem to be completely out of school mode on Mondays. They love their weekends. I know some students will actually use Friday's review and the weekend to study, but others will spend the weekend forgetting about school altogether. Other teachers are giving tests on the other days, so I don't have too many options (without moving it a week earlier). So what do you think? Mondays a bad day for a test?
I usually try to avoid Mondays. I find that students are more focused and more likely to study on other days of the week.
My son was given a test in either 7th or 8th grade on a Monday, after Thanksgiving break! Oh, he had also been out of school the week of Thanksgiving because of strep throat. When I said something, the teacher was like, oh, well. The unit is completed, we need to do the test and move on. We only have so much time.
I personally don't give tests on Mondays. I know that most students are not going to spend their weekends studying, even if I wanted them to (which I don't).
Monday is my least favorite day to give a test that requires students to study for. I rarely ever do it. Standardized tests--I don't have a choice. Many begin on Mondays. I'm okay with that as those don't require my students to study on the weekend.
I test whenever I finish a chapter/unit. Whatever day of the week that falls on. We give common tests here so there isn't a way for me to test on five day's worth of information if it is part of one chapter or a chapter and a half. One semester I tried moving test day to Tuesday to avoid Monday testing. That meant I had to either kill a day or move ahead with the next chapter but only test on the previous chapter's information. It was a disaster. I either got horribly behind the pacing schedule or the kids complained that I confused them by adding in the extra information that wasn't going to be tested. So I test when I finish up and move on. If kids aren't in school mode on Monday that really is on them, not me.
I prefer projects and accomplishment-focused tasks to tests, but on the rare case that I've used tests I worried about design more than timing. For example, one of my favorite approaches was to put students in groups of four, give each one a unique set of short answer high-level questions, and then have them interview their group. In other words, students got to take part in answering each set of questions except their own, where they had to serve as a moderator of sorts. Of course, this required addressing potential issues that a regular test did not...I always initiated group work by discussing and showing a rubric that defined what a successful group does and doesn't look like...but when it's done right it allows the test to be utilized as a learning opportunity and to address the material at a much higher level (specifically, it can focus on analysis, synthesis, and evaluation exclusively). Lastly, it significantly enhances long term retention of the concepts and their functions, compared to regular assessments.
In my high school classes, I give tests on Mondays. I like it because generally no one else gives tests on Mondays so I don't hear complaints about the kids having another test that same day. In my middle school classes, I do not give tests on Mondays. The 7th and 8th graders are so immature this year that they can barely handle a test on any other day of the week, if I tried on Monday they may have a meltdown.
