Build a Table of Specifications that balances
List your topics and the number of days you spent on each. It works out how many items each topic has earned, spreads them across the cognitive levels, and the item column sums to your total — exactly, not after you adjust the last row by hand.
The sample carries the TOS, the 20-item paper written to it, and the item analysis — no account needed.
How the numbers are decided
Not evenly. A topic you taught for eight days and one you taught for two have not earned the same number of questions.
Weighted by teaching time
Each topic’s share of the paper is its share of the days. That is the whole justification a TOS exists to record — that the test covers what the class actually spent its time on, and can be shown to.
The column sums to the total
Six percentages rounded to whole items almost never add to fifty. Rounding each one independently leaves you one over or two under, and the usual fix is to quietly change a cell. This apportions the remainders instead — the largest-remainder method — so the arithmetic closes on its own.
Across Bloom's revised levels
The six levels the DepEd templates in circulation use. The distribution is yours to set: a skills subject is not spread like a content subject, and a tool that pretended otherwise would just be overridden with a pen.
Then the paper, from the TOS
The item counts become an actual test — questions, options and an answer key — so the paper matches the specification instead of being written first and justified afterwards.
The opening distribution
Where it starts if you change nothing, weighted to the lower three levels — a paper-and-pen test is mostly a knowledge check, and the higher levels are where performance tasks live.
remembering
30% of the items, unless you say otherwise.
understanding
30% of the items, unless you say otherwise.
applying
20% of the items, unless you say otherwise.
analyzing
10% of the items, unless you say otherwise.
evaluating
5% of the items, unless you say otherwise.
creating
5% of the items, unless you say otherwise.
See one that adds up
A 20-item Grade 7 Science test from four topics and the days spent on them.
A finished specification
The table, the paper written to it, and the answer key — computed, not typed in.
Open the sample testAfter markingItem analysis
Difficulty and discrimination per item, and the one whose answer key turned out to be wrong.
See the item analysisBefore the testLesson plan
The ILAW-format lesson plan for the weeks the test covers, drafted from your division’s competencies.
See the lesson plannerBuild one for your next test
Add a class, enter the topics and the days, and check the column against the one you would have made by hand.