Problem-Attic - More than 80,000 questions available

You may remember that I introduced Problem-Attic at a faculty meeting earlier in October and also wrote a blog post about it.  Well, great news!  This past weekend Problem-Attic added more questions to their database.  Now it includes about 80,000 questions, grouped as follows:

•  22,000 released test questions from state assessments and curriculum documents. These cover Math, Science and Social Studies for grades 3–12.
• 3,200 questions from released NAEP/TIMSS tests.  These are for grades 3–12, mostly math and science and some ELA.
•  9,000 high school math contest questions.  These come from two prominent North Carolina state competitions.
• 45,000 NY Regents questions covering 11 core subjects.   These are mostly for grades 9–12, though middle school teachers will find many uses for them.

By late April, Problem-Attic expects to have questions from at least 25 states.

How to Use in Education:

I found it really easy to create worksheets based on the bank of questions in Problem-Attic.  This is a great tool to create review questions, challenge questions, or to differentiate instruction in your class.

That Quiz = That Good

Thatquiz has test activities for students and teachers of all grade levels.  In just minutes you can create interactive student quizzes in subjects such as math (from decimals up to Calculus), English (Vocabulary, SAT Vocabulary), Foreign Language (Spanish and French, all levels), Geography and Science (Cells, Anatomy, Elements and unit conversion).

How you can use this in the classroom?

Thatquiz can be used as formal or informal way to further assess student understanding.  You have full control over the quizzes and can vary the # of questions, the difficulty level, whether the quiz is timed and a whole lot more.  If you create a free account you can then publish your quizzes and ask students to sign in and take the quizzes which are then auto graded.  The Drag and Drop features in the Science and Geography questions would be ideal to use with the Epsons.

To give you an idea of how this can be used I have created a sample quiz for you.  This is a US Geography Quiz (in the spirit of the election).  You will have 5 minutes to drag the state names to their correct location on the US Map (timer starts when you drag your first label).  Email me to let me know how you did on the quiz.  Did you get them all the first time?  In less than 5 minutes?

Must Use Website - Free Test Question Bank

Wouldn't it be great if you could search through an existing bank of multiple choice and open response questions to create your own personalized worksheets?  Well, now you can through this amazing website I just discovered.  It's called Problem-Attic and of course its free.

Problem-Attic gives you access to 30 years of Regents Exams for Math, Science, Social Studies and English.  Within those subjects you can drill down into specific topics (i.e. Jim Crow laws, Electron dot diagram, Square roots and Imaginary numbers).  Simply add any questions you want into your document, order them how you want and the formatting and numbering will all magically happen.  It's really that easy.  All you need to do is create a username and password to get started.

Applications for teaching:

• Create customized worksheets for students to use as an introduction to a lesson or for an exit ticket
• If a student needs more practice with a specific topic, you can create a customized worksheet just for them.
• Use this in conjunction with PollEverywhere or Socrative as a method to dipstick how the students are doing during class
• Use for additional SAT prep questions for students