A couple more days of testing

Hello,

I'm ready to get back on track, but we have a couple more days of testing to get through.  I think the kids are giving their best effort.  I'm just trying to get them to see that what they call their best effort, can be better.  Our testing time is a full ninety minutes.  Most students can easily finish in forty-five.  I would really love to see them take advantage of that extra time to read through all of the questions slowly, just to make sure they didn't miss anything and to see that their answer makes sense.  Some have made some big improvements with this over the past five testing days.  Some would rather finish quickly.  We'll keep working on it.

I read quite a bit of Rafe Esquith's There Are No Shortcuts this weekend.  Rafe is a California teacher and the author of one of my favorite books on teaching, called Teach Like Your Hair is on Fire.  I agree with him on a lot of issues, including that our teaching time per day is too short, and that our teaching year is too short.  I feel like I don't have time to teach everything that I need to teach.  Starting off the year with assessment after assessment doesn't help either.  I don't know the answer, but am starting to think that I need to offer some optional instruction times either before or after school.  When you add in the fact that many students are behind the norm already, school will never get better for them until they can catch up.  I'm throwing this out there to see the reaction.  So give me some feedback.

I plan on following quite a bit of Mr. Esquith's classroom responsibilities plan.  I run a similar program during my government unit, but he takes it to another level.  We will elect a president, senators, representatives and a sheriff.  Judges will be appointed.  We will draft a constitution.  I've done all of this in the past, in what is generally a very popular unit, but this year the jobs will be paid.  (Fake money, of course, but students will be able to buy real priveleges and items with it.)  I'm excited about it already.  I'll start that in November, but stay tuned for further details.

I've got to run to a dinner.  Best turn out so far for reading logs.  Way to go folks!

All for now,

Mr. Shea