Finals. They are the most dreaded, most anticipated, most counted down to week of the school year. They signal the completion of all of your hard work, but also surmount to the most work all semester. As a student now, and as a teacher soon, I wish that my teachers had provided some useful activities and content to help guide me through these rough times.
Many of the final tests and projects that we complete are cumulative. This means that everything we learned over the year will be represented on our final. However, many of the things that we learn throughout the year are taught, tested, and abandoned. If we used what we learned in previous units to continue to build our knowledge, the final test may not be as dreaded. We see this often in math classes, using equations and strategies learned in prior units to further the skill for the next lesson. However, in other classes, we learn about the Punnett Square, we test, and we forget. We learn what years the American Revolution occurred in, we test, and we forget. We learn, we test, we forget.
It's a very regular occurrence, that I have experienced every single year, multiple times a year since I was in middle school. What's the point of teaching students something if they are going to forget it as soon as they test?
Maybe if we continuted to grow and nourish our knowledge throughout the semester, finals would be less of a struggle.