NECAP testing day one

Hello,

I thought the class did fairly well on their first day of NECAP testing.  They still need a little more practice on what checking their work means.  Four times I had this conversation:

Student: I'm done.

Me: Did you check your work, make sure everything made sense, finish everything?

Student: Yes.

Me: (after perusing the handed in booklet) What about this one?

Student: Oh, I guess I didn't see that one.

Me: (to myself)  AAAAUUUUGH!!


I don't think that they are all lying to me when they say that they have checked their work.  I don't think that many of them know what it means to check their work.  We'll go over that a lot this year.  Then again, and there is no way around this, some are just lazy.  The test isn't overly exciting for them and they don't feel like it is important.  You can see why they might want to finish ASAP.  Unfortunately it is important to the teachers and the school.  What is most frustrating about it is that it makes it so the test doesn't necessarily register what they know, but rather how poor their test taking skills are.  So the test may say that a student is weak in say, parts of speech, when really the student just skips portions of the test in their haste to get it done. 

The teachers agreed to go light on the homework this week.  My math class has their first weekly challenge of the year.  It is meant to be challenging and is not due until the end of the week.  The idea is that they should be pecking away at it all week.  They can ask me questions about it all week.  They are not graded on whether or not they got the right answer, but by how hard they worked on it.  I think that it is important to give them some problems that are unfamiliar.  American children rank high in how quickly they give up when they see something unfamiliar.  So please don't help your children on these.  Let them struggle.  Let them come in with their questions.  As long as they can show the work of their attempts, they will get the highest marks.  At the end of every week we will discuss the different strategies that we found out.  This weeks challenge are Numbrix puzzles from Parade magazine in the Sunday paper.  We did about 25% of the first one in class.  Let's see if they can finish the rest.

These testing days don't leave a whole lot of time for work.  Our afternoons for the next six days will include a special and a ninety minute test.  My day of teaching is practically over at 11:15.  Not my favorite days, to say the least. 

Thank you for signing the reading logs this week.  We are down to five "forgetful ones."

All for now.  Thanks for reading.

Mr. Shea