after todays little pop quiz i was wondering how does a teacher make sure that his or her test questions are worded correctly? no offense to gail, but i did not think that one question was a trick question, i thought it was just outright worded incorrectly, because ender was not in charge of a toon, he was in charge of his army. also, how should a teacher handle this situation? if a student or group of students begins to talk/complain/whine about the wording of questions?

Kirk, those are my feelings exactly! Ender was not in charge of a toon, so I was trying to figure out which one of his toons won the first battle. If the question had read "which army..." I would have put Ender's, but using higher order thinking skills had me look further into the question. I'm the kind of person who can't let something like this go, unfortunately, so this question has been bothering me ALL DAY!

Anyway, I want to share a story a little off topic that my reading teacher told us. When he was growing up, one of his teachers loved The Scarlet Letter. So, when it came time for the test, he tested them on insignificant details like "on which side of the creek bed did the Scarlet Letter land on when she took it off and threw it." Because he knew that the questions were going to be like that, my teacher read only for those details. Later, when he studied The Scarlet Letter again, he could not remember anything about the book. I was partially expecting questions like, "What color pattern were the lights Dragon Army had to follow?" but I'm glad that Gayle didn't get that specific.

Now to your question, I think that a teacher can be open for discussion about a question. For instance, if someone took the question differently because of thinking in a different way and could explain their stance, I would give them credit. I hate it when teachers count questions wrong without even thinking about how someone might have interpretted the question differently. When a group of students begin to whine about the way a question was worded, that's a perfect opportunity for debate! Through debating the question, the teacher can see if the students really understood what was going on. So, I would allow them to debate the wording of my questions, because I think that too is a learning experience.