My youngest is in the midst of final exam week. This year, instead of doing the exams by department, the exam schedule was created by period. Obviously, this means that for classes with multiple sections, the exam may occur over more than one day.

Her exam was on the second day of exams. The section some of her friends are in was on the first. On this exam, students had to prepare for  twelve essay questions.

My youngest, in conversation at the conclusion of the first day’s exams, found out that that the essay questions were being given in sequential order. Quickly calculating, she then went through the process of determining the statistical likelihood that a particular question was going to be on the exam. (She has never taken statistics and she is a good, not great math student).

Is this how we want students learning? To try to predict the likelihood of a question appearing using the same methods that I used? Or do we want students to focus on deeper understanding or create new meaning?