[etni] Remembering pre-Modular Bagrut exams

From: James Backer <drjamesbacker@xxxxxxxxx>
To: etni@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
Date: Wed, 19 May 2010 02:33:16 -0700 (PDT)
Greetings,
all!
In the
Pre-NBA exams there were plenty of arguments over poorly written questions with
more than one possible answer. Moreover, in open answers some kids would 
inevitably
find a reasonable answer not thought of by the exam makers.
Nevertheless,
Ruthi’s harking back to pre-Modular exams does make a lot of sense. In those
days, many (most?) schools taught *English* until the 11th grade and
then taught English and exam-taking skills for the truncated 12th grade. In the 
middle of the 12th grade, the students and teachers then
went into “exam mode” and usually survived the Bagrut.
Since the
switch to the Module Bagrut system, we seem to be in constant “exam mode” from
the 10th grade onwards. We are frequently (constantly?) teaching to
the test, which is only a small sub-set of what English is, or what it should 
be. 
The amount
of administrative work to prepare the matkonot and the actual exams, with all
the variations for accommodations, is the same for one smaller module as it is 
for one big exam. That means we are working at least three times as hard for a
3-point, 4-point, or 5-point Bagrut. (With popular moed bets, we are actually
working up to six times the amount.) It means that we are teaching to the test
for much longer periods, even if we want to teach English as well.
This is the
case, despite (or perhaps because) over-all cuts in the number of English hours 
per week and in some
cases, the number of minutes in a class “hour.”  In addition, we are facing 
increasingly time-consuming
demands from the MOE (projects, HOTS, etc.) that bring in no monetary 
remuneration
for our extra work hours. 
I know it
would be foolish to blame the decreasing English abilities of our high school
graduates any one particular factor; nevertheless, I would suggest that we
examine the advantages and disadvantages of the modular exam system now that we
have had a few years of experience with it.
Jimmy   
-----
Original Message ----- 
From: Ruthi - rsheffer@xxxxxxxxx
Subject: ambiguous Bagrut Questions

Hi All

I am sorry to sound so geriatric but is anyone else nostalgic for the good 
old Pre Module exams when we native speakers and experienced non native 
speaker teachers all agreed as to what the correct answers to the exams 
were? We used to sit around in a group while the kids were writing and 
prepare the answer sheets.

Today we run around crazily checking that all is okay with the E module 
listening (which it isn't!) and barely have time to see the paper.And when 
we do ,we see that there are discrepancies and arguments among teachers as 
to which answers are acceptable!

In the cloze and the rewrites there was no such problem. WE had a body of 
material to teach.We knew what grammar topics would appear in the 
rewrites,and what kind of questions to prepare our students for in the 5 
point literature questions. Am I just too old or is the NBA really more 
chaotic and less of a language test and more of an intelligence test?

Chag Sameach
Ruthi


      

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[etni] Remembering pre-Modular Bagrut exams

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