Everyone loves a good story — or, I’ve found, even a bad one! One of the devices I used to test kids was that of a story. Setting the usual kinds of test can be boring and off-putting. Setting a story test can be much more satisfying for the pupils, and lead to a good discussion in the classroom afterwards.

In essence, the stages are as follows:

Decide on what you’re trying to ascertain as far as your pupils’ knowledge, skills and understanding are concerned.
Write a short story containing some inaccuracies.
Ask the pupils to identify the 10 (say) errors, and say why they are errors.
Ask the pupils to rewrite those bits of the story, or at least correct the errors.
Have a class discussion about it.

For example, an error might be a wrong spreadsheet function, incorrect syntax in a snippet of code, or simply a less efficient block of code than ideal.

It’s a good idea for the pupils to work in pairs, especially at stage 4, because quite often there is not only one unequivocal solution.

When I did this, I found that the stories didn’t take me very long to write, because I wasn’t aiming to win any short story awards.

I also found that the pupils found it engaging.

I read once that there is a danger with this sort of thing that pupils may remember the mistakes rather than the corrections. I suppose that could happen, but all I can say is that I never found that to be the case. I think the process of small group or paired discussion, followed by a whole class discussion, mitigates against that possibility.

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