No habla ingles

It's that time, once again, for the kids to do their TELPAS writing samples. I think I blogged about the TELPAS last year, calling it the stupidest, most subjective test ever. Thankfully, I passed it after the 3rd time last year and I don't have to take it again. Also thankfully, the test is for teachers and NOT for the kids.

All the kids have to do is write when I ask them to, ABOUT what I ask them to. There's really only one catch.

They have to write in English.

Now that's not a problem for most of my kids. Their spelling is often pretty lousy and their punctuation often nonexistent, but they are getting their thoughts across in English pretty well.

I have one little boy though that just knows no English whatsoever. I mean, he knows SOME, but very, very, VERY little. Certainly not enough to be able to put down his thoughts in English. Not even enough to put down a few WORDS along the lines of his thoughts in English.

And yet the guidelines say that EVERY child on the LEP (Limited English Proficiency) roster must have these writing samples, and they all must be in English!

So I'm just not sure what to do about this kid. He could probably copy words from around the room, but that's specifically forbidden.

Any ideas from people who have gone through this before?

Here's my advice to you

Today's writing prompt: What advice would you give to next year's third graders?

I REALLY enjoyed reading my kids responses today. There is definitely a lot of room for improvement, but some of these kids really can pull their thoughts together and write pretty well.

CLEARLY, Mrs. Educator and I got at least one thing through to the kids this year, as it came up in many of the passages today… Do your homework, or else you will miss your recess.

Here are a few other choice excerpts:

“You better study or you will not learn anything in science."

"Bring your homework every day, do not leave it at home and say I forgot to bring it. Do not make an excuse and say that."

"In the third grade you only use the restroom two times, that's in the morning and after recess."

"Keep up the good work and you will reach your goal and you'll become a third grader. Next you will be in third grade like me and you will find what you are looking for."
[DEEP!]

"When it comes to field trips try not to miss them because they are really cool."

“Do not try to talk while you are taking tests.”

"Third grade is not hard like they say."

“And learn to spell words that are hard like goverment, milk way, o clock, teachers, pencil, pennsilvaneya, colorodo, and crayons so that's why you have to learn to spell.”
[gud addvize!]

"Do not talk or play until you have recess or else Mister Teacher will have you stand in a corner or go to another teacher's classroom for 10 minutes or more."

"If you have bad writing practice writing a story or buy a book that helps you write neat. Because you need to have good handwriting in third grade. So your teacher can read it."

“Some more advice would be is don't play in class or talk during class because Mister Teacher will get mad and make you stand in the corner."

And this one, I have to post in its entirety, because it is just fantastic in my opinion. I think it might actually fit more into Monday's topic of “What was your favorite thing in third grade math?” but she wrote it today:

“My advice to next year's third graders is that they got to be listening to what they have been taught. Another thing I will like to say is that when it comes to algebra it is going to be so easy.
Algebra is easy because you only think that you got to do is add. For example F + 8 = 16 -- the answer is 8 which is F. Sometimes it is hard if you see a letter with a two know that you are supposed to multiply. For example P2 = 144. The 2 means square and there is 12 X 12.
Algebra has different types of things to do like in high school middle school you got to find out what a whole bunch of numbers equals to. It is kind of easy if you know how to do little types of algebra.”
[Who knew that a couple of days of the most BASIC algebra techniques would have such an impact!]


All of their responses were really great. But I'm very interested to read TOMORROW'S papers…

The prompt?

“What do you think about Mister Teacher and Mrs. Educator?”