Oral exams (middle schoolers)

[Ester Maria]

Just curious - do any of you practice oral exams with your kids? By oral exam, I don't mean an occasional few minutes talk about a project, making them summarize something, or simply talking to them about what you study - but proper "exam-like" situation, in which you ask the questions, they respond, you ask all the why's and how's and don't help them with the answers (or even purposely try to confuse them to see how well they got things and how sure they are in what they know), make them draw connections with things studied previously by asking questions on those too, and then grading it (or not grading it, if grading is against your educational philosophy)?

 

If so, how often do you do it, for what subjects, do you mix subjects (i.e. when asking questions on one field, do you tend to require immediate knowledge of other things too related to it that you studied, or you stick to one field?), and do you announce when you will examine your kids this way or you keep the right to do it any time?

 

I do it, but I've never seen a thread about that before on here, so I was just curious if somebody else does something similar and what are your experiences with it?

[KAR120C]

Just curious - do any of you practice oral exams with your kids? By oral exam, I don't mean an occasional few minutes talk about a project, making them summarize something, or simply talking to them about what you study - but proper "exam-like" situation, in which you ask the questions, they respond, you ask all the why's and how's and don't help them with the answers (or even purposely try to confuse them to see how well they got things and how sure they are in what they know), make them draw connections with things studied previously by asking questions on those too, and then grading it (or not grading it, if grading is against your educational philosophy)?

 

There's a section of each chapter in his science book, which could be long-answer written work (or just review type questions if we didn't do them officially). I use them as an oral quiz, and throw in extra questions to tie in both earlier information and extra details that I think deserve more emphasis. We do the same thing with any area that he needs to solidify, although not necessarily in such a formal situation. We've always done something like that... I think oral responses are a different sort of skill than written, since they require quicker thinking and a certain amount of memorization.

[love2read]

I do it with a different subject each week and follow whatever the questions are in the program. I do probe and expect the to be given an answer in a complete sentence with details. It forces them to be articulate, no hemming or hawing, and to think on their feet. Works for us :)