1. What is it you want to test? What is the criteria for assessing this knowledge or skill? You could use Bloom's Taxonomy to arrive at the answer to this.
2. Chalk out a marking scheme. This would depend on how much time and what importance is given to specific parts of the syllabus being tested. Are you allotting too many marks to questions on a small part of the syllabus? Or too few marks for a large portion of information.
3. Include information in the questions that makes them easy to understand. The purpose is not to confuse but to extract the information from the examinees.
4. Keep the same standard every year – nothing is more stressing for an examinee than to see a “tough” question paper one year and an “easy” one the following. They then start trying to guess questions, which does not aid learning.
5. Test your paper for time. See that the questions are prepared such that the students can attempt all the questions in the given time.
6. Show the allocation of marks for each question and its parts. This helps the examinee to decide just how much they want to write on that sub-question.
7. One major criterion for assessment should be what students can do with the information given in the question – how they process that information.
8. Try not to overlap questions such that part of an answer comes up again in a later question. This will cause confusion as the students don't expect to write the same thing again. Watch out for answers to one question coming in another question!
9. Try your questions in class tests – this will give the students a bit of practice in question types as well as give you some insight into how they are interpreting your questions.
10. Have a question bank prepared in advance so that not too much time is spent in creating questions when they are needed by the printer!

ANALYSE

Show the nature of a thing by identifying the essential elements and showing how they are related. Weaknesses or disadvantages may come to light in this process.

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ARGUE

Present the case for and/or against a particular proposition.

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COMMENT ON

Point out the important features, criticise.

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COMPARE

Identify characteristics or qualities that resemble each other. Emphasise similarities and also mention differences where appropriate.

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CONTRAST

Stress the dissimilarities and differences between things, events, problems, or qualities.

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CRITICISE

Express your judgement about the merit or truth of the factors or views mentioned. Draw conclusions, discussing both the limitations and the good points.

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DEFINE

Provide concise, clear, and authoritative meanings. Give the limits of the definition, but omit detailed explanations. Show how the item defined differs from items in other classes.

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DESCRIBE

Recount, characterise, outline, and relate in sequence.

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DIAGRAM

A drawing, chart, plan, or graph. Diagrams should be labelled and there should be an accompanying explanation.

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DISCUSS

Examine, analyse carefully, and give reasons for and against. Be complete and give details, usually with a view to assessing how satisfactory something is.

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EVALUATE

Carefully appraise in relation to some standard, referring to advantages, limitations, and costs and benefits as appropriate; attempt to come to a judgement.

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EXAMINE

Investigate critically, appraise a subject in detail.

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EXPLAIN

Clarify, interpret, and elaborate on the material presented. Give reasons for differences of opinion or results, and try to analyse causes.

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ILLUSTRATE

Use a concrete example, diagram, or figure to explain or clarify a problem.

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INDICATE

Identify, then focus attention so as to clarify.

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JUSTIFY

Prove or give reasons for conclusions or decisions.

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OUTLINE

Present the essential features, showing main points and subordinate points. Omit minor details. Stress the arrangement or classification of things.

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REVIEW

Examine a subject critically, analysing and commenting on the important or controversial statements.

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STATE

Present the main points in a brief and clear sequence, usually omitting details or examples.

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SUMMARISE

Give the main points or facts in condensed form.

Check out a lot of study resources compiled by Monash University at http://www.monash.edu.au/lls/llonline/study/exam/index.xml
Several of these are in the form of online courses which you could try.

Education is a necessary tool that all people must possess in order to find independence and success in life. This tool should be offered to all of our world's children by teachers who invest a great interest in all that they teach so that their drive and enthusiasm for learning is evident and contagious. Knowing that not all children respond to the same style of teaching , learners should be exposed to many different ways of learning during their life long pursuit of education. Every child is born with the ability and the willingness to learn and has an innate right to an education that is free from discrimination and violence therefore I feel that the Philosophy of Education that would describe my teaching style would be progressive and democratic reconstructivism.

We need to teach our children to be critical thinkers and wise decision makers in addition to encouraging them to practise good interpersonal skills and to show respect for others. The knowledge gained throughout the years of learning and each child's experience will set the stage for future achievements and attainment of both personal and professional goals.

The classroom should be run like a small democracy, everyone helping to put together ideas, learning together to solve problems to improve society.

I BELIEVE....

• Every child can learn
• Every child has individual potential
• Every child is important
• I can make a difference
• Teaching involves the heart and mind
• Each child has unique strength, weakness, and interest

I WILL

• Provide a warm and secure atmosphere
• Be a positive role model
• Acknowledge and utilize the positive aspect of each child to make them feel important
• Inspire each child to reach their highest individual potential
• Differentiate my teaching to meet the needs of each child
• Be aware of student's interest and life outside the classroom
• Welcome parents and make them feel comfortable with me
• Continue to improve myself as a person as well as a teacher

I AM

• A compassionate, caring decision maker
• Committed to help each child succeed
• Flexible and open to change for the benefit of children
• Hard-working and dedicated to the growth of each child academically, socially, emotionally
• Excited about children learning
• Excited about learning from children

The author can be contacted at kumar.malathy@ilfsets.com

Malathy Kumar
Assistant Manager, IL&FS ETS, Chennai

Teachers, not unlike their colleagues in other community-oriented professions, are quick to utilize new and emerging channels for communication. I have personally experienced the impact of the electronic modes of communication which energize contact between teachers, students, and parents. It is not that email and social networks are better or more efficient than, say, the telephone or the handwritten note, but it is simply that new modes of communication offer unique features that expand a teacher’s mechanisms to establish and remain in regular contact with students.

When, some 10 plus years ago, I first began to use the email, including group mails to talk to my students, many people – among them my colleagues – thought that it was just a technology driven fad. Without exaggeration, it is clear to all today that millions of teachers the world over would find it difficult to do without the email to stay in touch with their class. Sending instructions about homework via the email means that I communicate clearly and precisely. I like having my copy of the mail on record for as long as I wish, which is usually for the duration of the term or semester. Filing things away is a lot less cumbersome on the computer, with the added benefit of being able to check who among your recipients hasn’t opened the given piece of mail. And, using the calendar built into many mail programs facilitates reminders, where necessary.

Innovations in technology have made a significant impact on the way we communicate. Take as an example a social networking medium such as the Facebook. I use it regularly to keep in touch with friends and, more importantly, to have an idea of what’s going on in the day-to-day lives of my circle of Facebook friends. Without describing the various functions available to a user, I would say that the Facebook, in some of its uses is way ahead of the email as we know it in facilitating casual communication within a community.

I see Facebook like a virtual block of college dorms in the evening, when the work day is done. People are mingling, running into one another in corridors, knocking on people’s doors looking for company, crashing into a party for a quick round of hellos, or sitting in one’s own room, just looking out of the window, watching the world go by, hearing laughter from a room above, noticing a friend at a study desk in a room across the courtyard. Privacy is for you to define in those spaces inhabited by the young. The ambience is informal, conversations are fleeting, meetings are chance, and opportunities for being passive in a bustling crowd scene plentiful.

For me, keeping in touch with past students has become increasingly pleasant through Facebook. You have access to your friends’ pages at all times and you can have a quick glimpse of their life as it is being lived. There’s something relaxed and easy about knowing that your friends can visit your page – as they would your dorm room – and get a sense of your state of mind, your preoccupation at that moment, and your friend can decide to walk in or pass by. From a word in greeting to quick chats about career decisions, my past students use the Facebook to tell their circle of friends (including me) about things going on in their lives.

I know some readers out there worry about confidentiality, inappropriate use of personal information, and the sheer amount of time one could potentially spend in the virtual world. Facebook users are as varied as students in an undergraduate dorm, where some party endlessly, some are reckless, but all are generally in it to exploit the opportunity to enjoy the unique life of a student life.

Today, with technology, we have the opportunity to belong to a variety of communities, where we can be active or passive members. As a teacher, I have always been surrounded by people much younger than myself, and the age gap has only widened, as the years have gone by. That’s been a singular advantage for me, as my students have invited me to experience their fresh worlds in many ways, including their world of social interaction through virtual spaces, using the technology of the internet. In our days as students, we didn’t really invite our teachers to learn our slang or hang out with us, even if they opened their homes to us. Today’s youth appear to be unencumbered by barriers we didn’t know to break. I am happy to be invited into their world of strange acronyms and short-hand slang, their nifty video clips and the ever growing semantics of the smiley face. Keeping friends has never been easier.

"Excerpt from the article Life in the times of Facebook by Dr. Kamakshi Balasubramanian originally published by Teacher Plus magazine... Reproduced with permission."

Read the entire article at http://www.teacherplus.org/2009/december-2009/life-in-the-times-of-facebook

Burnout in teachers
Teachers and educators often face a unique combination of stressors that can cause them to experience burnout. While they are often faced with the common problems of everyday life, teachers also have additional responsibilities related to demands being placed on them each school year. New textbooks, new students, changing schedules, dealing with a unique population of individuals (young children, adolescents) each with their own developmental troubles, all add up to a sometimes deadly mixture of burnout syndrome for teachers. The helping professions have long known to be significantly impacted by the burnout rate among professionals. Teachers have the unique responsibility of ensuring the well-being and development of their wards. This responsibility can become a huge liability, when mixed with poor funding, limited control, marginal working conditions and unreasonable demands, leading teachers to live in a state of chronic stress that eventually leads to burnout. (Dworkin, 1987)

Interestingly, teachers who are good at what they do and enjoy their work are often the most susceptible to burnout. Teachers who enjoy their work often overwork and over time, begin to derive less meaning from their work as the stress of overworking begins to affect them.

Causes of burnout
Eminent psychologist, Gerald Corey suggests many reasons for burnout among professionals. Individual factors, in combination with interpersonal demands and organisational issues contribute towards burnout. Corey outlines several causes that lead to burnout.

• Repetitive, tedious work with little or no variation.
• Lack of appreciation and meaning in the work.
• Performance pressures which are unreasonable.
• Working with difficult populations (eg. Adolescent students, students with disabilities).
• Conflict at work and absence of supportive networks.
• Critical supervisors and lack of trust between management and staff.
• No opportunity for movement within the organisation or a lack of continuing training opportunities.
• Personal life conflicts like marital problems, health concerns, financial trouble, relationship difficulties, etc.

How to avoid burnout and return to a healthy life
Everyone is susceptible to burnout, since it is linked to how a person manages his/her daily life stressors. If you are not in the burnout cycle, it is best to start with living a healthy lifestyle. Teaching can easily become stressful and unmanageable if the pressures of work and life become too much to handle. Thus, following a healthy schedule can often prevent burnout.

• Sleep for at least 7-8 hours per night. Sleep refreshes our minds and our bodies allowing us to feel rejuvenated. Gross deficits are apparent only after 2 hours of less sleep in one night or 5 hours or less in two successive nights. Impairment in dealing with more complex tasks especially those involving the acquisition and integration of new material becomes most noticeable as sleep drops below 6 hours.
• Eat healthy and regularly include essential foods in your diet.
• Exercise daily for at least 30 minutes. Most people find this difficult to do given their busy schedules. If the choice is between doing nothing and moving for at least 10 minutes, start with 10 minutes a day. Exercise of any kind boosts endorphins in the brain, which are better known as the happy chemicals, which keeps life stress manageable.
• Avoid alcohol or drugs, which can enhance mood in the short term, but have long term depressive effects on the central nervous system. In addition, using alcohol to cope with difficult situations often leads to addictive use, which leads to more problems than it solves.
• Avoid isolation and use your social support networks to help you through difficult times. Social isolation leads to various psychological problems and having someone to talk to, about your problems is always beneficial.

As a teacher, managing stress can be a challenge. Some tips to help manage stress, specifically for teachers include:

• Leave "teaching" to school only and try not to bring work home often. Pursue a hobby that is unrelated to your school work.
• Keep a to-do list to manage the competing demands placed on your time
• Accept that you can’t do everything and that you have limitations.
• Learn to plan and prioritise.
• Increase your tolerance by understanding others and learn to manage your feelings of frustration and anger. Exercise helps in managing negative feelings!

If you are already on your way to a burnout, start by managing your current life stressors. In addition, Judy Downs Lombardi in her article 'Do you have teacher burnout' suggests the following to manage existing burnout.

• Find new ways to do old things. Be creative with the way you teach and allow your imagination to do new things.
• Challenge yourself to keep learning. Seek out resources that make your job fun and exciting for you to keep doing.
• Collaborate with your colleagues to help you manage/enhance your work.
• Change grade levels that you are teaching.
• Allow for your own imperfections and recognise that you cannot change every student’s life.
• Care for yourself as a person and nurture yourself. Conserve and replenish your psychological resources (emotional/physical) and be good to yourself.
• Explore other ways you can work within the profession.

"Excerpt from the article Watch out for burnout by Diana Monteiro originally published by Teacher Plus magazine... Reproduced with permission."

Read the entire article at http://www.teacherplus.org/cover-story/watch-out-for-burnout

Teaching is like no other profession. As a teacher, you will wear many hats. You will, to name but of a few of the roles teachers assume in carrying out their duties, be a communicator, a disciplinarian, a conveyor of information, an evaluator, a classroom manager, a counselor, a member of many teams and groups, a decision-maker, a role-model, and a surrogate parent. Each of these roles requires practice and skills that are often not taught in teacher preparation programs. Not all who want to be teachers should invest the time and resources in teacher training or teacher preparation programs if they do not have the appropriate temperament, skills, and personality. Teaching has a very high attrition rate. Depending on whose statistics you trust, around forty percent of new teachers leave teaching within the first five years. It is obviously not what they thought it would be. One thing for sure, it's about more than loving kids.

Make no mistake; as a teacher, your day doesn't necessarily end when the school bell rings. If you're conscientious, you will be involved in after school meetings, committees, assisting students, grading homework, assignments, projects, and calling parents. All these demand some sacrifice of your personal time. If you're committed to excellence as a teacher, it's a sacrifice you can live with. If not, you will be uncomfortable at best.

Teacher training and teacher preparation programs exist in every state, as well as in various forms of on-line courses and degree programs, and the requirements vary. You will have many options from which to choose. Choose wisely. My own advice is to select a program that offers a rich and solid foundation of courses, regardless of whether you intend to teach at the elementary, middle school, or high school level. I believe that no teacher education program, including the one in which I teach, can actually teach you how to teach. Rather, what we do is get you ready to learn how to teach, and that takes place on the job. My advice is to choose a program that offers a rich balance of subject matter content courses and pedagogy, including clinical experience in all its forms. You are learning both skills and understandings in any teacher education program. Practice those skills as perfectly as possible, and strive each day to deepen your understandings of the concepts, theories and generalizations that you encounter. By doing so, you will build a solid foundation for learning how to teach once you become employed, and, you will be a better teacher.

From my own teaching experience and from discussions and teaching many hundreds of teachers and thousands of teacher education students, there emerge common threads of understanding and skill that good teachers weave into an effective personal style of teaching. Assess your own knowledge and values in terms of your thoughts about the following:

Good teachers:

are good at explaining things. Do you like to explain how something works, or how something happened? Being comfortable with explaining content to students is an essential skill for teachers.

keep their cool. There will be times when you will be tempted to scream or yell at your students, other teachers, parents, administrators, and so on. Good teachers are able to successfully resist this urge.

have a sense of humor. Research has consistently shown that good teachers have a sense of humor, and that they are able to use humor as part of their teaching methods. Humor, used properly, can be a powerful addition to any lesson.

like people, especially students in the age range in which they intend to teach. Most teachers choose an area of specialization such as elementary education, special education, secondary education, or higher education because they have a temperament for students in those age ranges. If you are not comfortable working with young children, don't major in elementary education!

are inherently fair-minded. They are able to assess students on the basis of performance, not on the students' personal qualities.

have "common sense." It may sound a bit corny, but good teachers are practical. They can size up a situation quickly and make an appropriate decision. Whether managing a classroom, leading students on a field trip, seamlessly shifting from one instructional procedure to another, assigning detentions, supervising an intern, or dealing with policy and curriculum issues in the school, there is no substitute for common sense.

have a command of the content they teach. For elementary school teachers, that means having knowledge of a broad range of content in sufficient depth to convey the information in meaningful ways to the students. For secondary school teachers, it usually means having an in-depth command of one or two specific content areas such as mathematics or biology.

set high expectations for their students and hold the students to those expectations. If you are thinking about becoming a teacher, you should set high expectations for yourself, and demand excellence not only of yourself, but your students as well.

are detail oriented. If you are a disorganized person in your private life, you will find that teaching will probably be uncomfortable for you. At the very least, teachers must be organized in their professional and teaching duties. If you're not organized and are not detail oriented, teaching may not be the best choice of a profession for you.

are good managers of time. Time is one of the most precious resources a teacher has. Good teachers have learned to use this resource wisely.

can lead or follow, as the situation demands. Sometimes, teachers must be members of committees, groups, councils, and task forces. Having the temperament to function in these capacities is extremely important. At other times, teachers assume leadership roles. Be sure you are comfortable being a leader or a follower, because sooner or later, you will be called on to function in those roles.

don't take things for granted. This applies to everything, from selecting a college or school of education to filing papers for certification. Good follow-through habits should be cultivated throughout life, but they are never more important than during your teacher education program. Read the catalog, know the rules, be aware of prerequisites and meet deadlines. In one sense, you don't learn to teach by getting a degree and becoming certified. You learn to teach in much the same way you learned to drive -- by driving. You learn to teach by teaching, by making mistakes, learning from them and improving. The purpose of a teacher education program is to get you as ready as possible to learn how to teach by subjecting you to a variety of methods and experiences that have a basis in tradition and research.

have some "hard bark" on them. Take it from me as a teacher in both public schools and at the university level, that you need some hard bark in order to survive let alone thrive.

"Excerpt from the article Tips on Becoming a Teacher originally published in ADPRIMA website...Used with the permission of Dr. R. J. Kizlik, developer of adprima.com, a website for new and future teachers."

Read the entire article at http://www.adprima.com/tipson.htm