Tips for Writing Chemistry Test Questions

I get a lot of questions about how I write and administer my tests. Truth be told, I’ve written a lot of tests. And I actually enjoy it… I find the puzzle exciting! For that reason, I’ve put together a few of my tips for writing test questions for chemistry.

Use What You Used for Classwork

There’s two options here. It’s going to depend on your preference. If you reuse literally the questions you’ve already given students you get the shortcut! It’s nice to be able to use this shortcut, but depending on the question or type, it’s not really “testing their knowledge” but instead, may be testing their memory. Be careful with this option.

Most teachers will give *almost* the same question by changing up the language a tiny bit. It gives a good idea of how well students understand concepts. Especially if you can change it just enough. You can use some of the swaps I’ve written about below in order to get your new question written.

Write Your Questions in a Variety of Ways

When it comes to chemistry test questions, the answer choices REALLY make the difference. Let’s take for example, this question:

Which of the following is a chemical element?

Names and Formulas

For something like this, I would write a version with answer choices as IUPAC names, and a second version as chemical formulas. I’d also makes sure when I wrote them, I had a compound that had the same letters as a chemical element, like CO and Co for example. This ensures students know the difference between capital and lowercase letters in chemical formulas.

Flip-Flop Method

Then you can write your questions flip-flopped. “Salt water is best described as” (insert classes of matter). OR “Which of the following is considered a mixture?” (insert 1 monatomic element, 1 diatomic element, 1 compound and and finally your mixture). Mix the flip-flop strategy with the IUPAC Name vs. Formula method from above.

One Correct Answer

Be careful to include only one correct answer. This one comes up for me quite a bit now that I’m teaching somebody else’ curriculum as an online teacher. “When the temperature of a gas increases at constant pressure, the volume:” They gave two correct answers: increases”” and “elevates.” Even though “elevates” is a silly way to say this answer, it technically could work. Especially if you have ELL students in your classroom. Be mindful of slip ups like this.

Watch for Arguments

I had a student recently ask if a glass of ice water counted as a compound or a mixture. And honestly, it was tough to give an answer. Yes, all the molecules are the same compound, but they are in two different phases. You could separate the ice from the liquid by filtration. They have different temperatures (perhaps). This is not something I would have ever thought could become an issue on a test, but it can be. Even if it’s a stretch, make sure that your wrong answers are definitely wrong. This is certainly true for tests of any subject that your write, but especially true in chemistry. Be sure to write the question you actually want the the answer to!

Don’t Want to Write Tests at All?

AI Isn’t There Yet

I have tested this over and over again to see if I could find a good AI System to help you out. Truly, for a good quality high school level test, the technology isn’t there yet. I’ll keep testing them out periodically and let you know if I find one that I think could really help you out. For now, it they may be good for giving you a list of topics to cover, or some vocabulary terms to include, but it’s just not ready yet.

When I was testing this for Matter & Energy, I was getting 4th and 5th grade level questions. They aren’t yet smart enough to give you problems for the heat equations, phase diagrams, or separation of mixtures. If you wrote a good test, you could potentially ask it to scramble answer choices for you, but I haven’t tried that yet. I’m sort of afraid to put my tests into the AI and then it uses it for somebody else’s test creation. Once my questions get out – students can find them.

Google Searching

The classic way to get your questions – I have mixed opinions about this. I don’t copy questions directly from Google. Because I know if they’re out there living on the internet, the answers are too. I find this to be especially true with Quizlet! Yes, I monitor students during tests, but by the time that test is given to the last class of the day, you know that even if by word of mouth only, it’s not as secure as it was for your first class of the morning.

Let Me Do It For You

With this there are two options. I don’t sell my tests individually, simply because I’m not interested in a student potentially getting their hands on them. By including them with my curriculum, I, as far as I know, haven’t had teachers run into this problem. Additionally, I’ve written a few chemistry final exams that are available separately from the curriculum. But it’s pretty pricey for a high school student.

With each unit of my curriculum (which you can buy all together or a la carte, by unit) there are three versions of a unit test. They’re roughly 25 questions each. Typically with 20 multiple choice questions and 5 free response questions.

The final exams are 75 questions each. They have 50 multiple choice questions and 25 free response questions for each test. There are four different tests included in the pack, each with two versions. In total that’s over 300 test questions. Plenty of chemistry teachers have used this final exam pack to have a test bank of questions to use all year long. The questions are labeled by unit, so it’s very easy to find all the Atomic questions, for example. Use them for your Atomic test.