On a dime

It's truly amazing how quickly things can change, on a dime, as the old saying goes. This week has proven that.

Monday was one of the most frustrating days of the year. The High Level Task was a difficult one -- it would have been difficult for a class of high-achieving, non-apathetic, English as a First Language students -- and it drained me. It drained my energy, my patience, and our class time. Just going over the directions took forever. I wanted them to repeat the directions to me, in their own words, to make sure they understood what to do. So we spent a LONG time on each step of the directions. Then we did a couple of example steps, so they would know how they were supposed to record their explorations.

Finally, I gave them the green light to start the task with their groups. With most groups, you would have thought I had merely handed them the paper and said, "Go."

Most of the class (BOTH classes) were utterly clueless. They didn't know what to do, they were moving their token the wrong way on the 1,000 scroll, they were either not recording things at all, or recording them the wrong way.

I was majorly frustrated.

Then on Tuesday, something clicked. The kids were participating. They were telling me correct answers. They were showing their work on the paper. We seemed to have achieved something.

Wednesday was great, too. It was a review day for the Unit 1 post-test. We went over place value, pictographs, number forms, greater than and less than, number patterns. The kids were telling me how to show their work. They were creating and labeling pictographs. They seemed completely set for today's test.

Then Bam, they must have hit another dime. I was again majorly frustrated today, this time with their efforts on the test. Granted, some of the kids did a great job, but in the case of my morning class especially, I was mentally screaming as I walked around the room seeing kid after kid filling in answer bubbles with absolutely no work shown. The second question was a pictograph - something we had JUST done so well on the day before - and only a handful of students were labeling the pictures before choosing an answer.

Even when I made a big deal about NOT just choosing an answer choice without showing any work, I still had kids who just filled in a bubble and then waited for the next question.

If looks could kill, I'd have multiple counts of manslaughter against me today.

Thankfully, they can't, so I just have multiple fragments of a major headache.

TAKS for the memories

(On) Tomorrow is the 4th grade Writing TAKS. This is the first of the TAKS tests that will be given this year, and 4th grade teachers across the state (including my wife) have been nervously anticipating the day.

This made me think that today might be a good day to have an INTERACTIVE MONDAY that asks, "Whaddya think about standardized tests?"

Go ahead, rant. Rave. Spew invectives all over the keyboards. But please share with us what you think of your state's current testing situation.

To see MY opinions, please revisit this old post -- Testivus.


Good night, and good luck, 4th graders.

Practice testing

Hey everyone,

Welcome to the work week. Monday Monday, can't trust that day. Which is why I will NEVER name my son or daughter, "Monday."

Today my school gave a practice TAKS test. It was a math TAKS release. Tomorrow will be a reading TAKS release. I won't even go into the fuster-cluck that was the organization of this practice test. But the procedure itself is just extremely long and boring for us teachers. It's no doubt long and boring for the students as well, but at least they have something to do for that whole time. All we have is to stay vigilant and monitor.

Here's basically what my day looked like:

7:30 -- Pick up tests and iron out confusion with the test process.

7:50 -- Pick up my homeroom and tell them where to sit in our out-of-the-ordinary desk arrangement.

8:10 -- Take homeroom for a bathroom break to get that out of the way before the test starts.

8:30 -- Go upstairs to 5th grade hallway, to the classroom I would be monitoring.

8:35 -- Pass out tests and measurement charts.

8:45 -- Grudgingly allow one child to use the bathroom, wondering why he is having a "potty emergency" after just going to the bathroom at 8:10.

9:00 -- Ask 3 kids to focus on their tests instead of looking around the room every 10 seconds.

9:30 -- Take a picture of the little guinea pig in the classroom and wonder what HIS TAKS score would be like.

10:00 -- Pick up tests and pass out snacks for a break. Muffins were delivered to the rooms, but no water. I'm wondering why they didn't go with peanut butter.

10:10 -- Take class for another bathroom break. Speak the words, "Stop talking," about 25 times.

10:30 -- Notice that one kid is done with his test. Inform him that I will not pick it up until he shows how he got his answers.

11:00 -- Field the "What are millimeters?" question for the 3rd time.

11:30 -- Yes, student who so desperately wants me to think that you are actually checking your work, I DO see you deliberately counting on your fingers! Now stop looking back at me every 5 seconds to see if I am watching you!

11:45 -- Pick up the tests again and herd the kids out the door for lunch.

11:50-12:10 -- relaxing lunch break with other teachers in the lounge.

12:10 -- Pick kids up and take them for a bathroom break. I am handed proof that there has been little to no maturation in these kids since I had them in 3rd grade.

12:20 -- Resume testing

12:25 -- A child hands me a broken pencil and asks for a replacement.

12:25:04 -- Something causes about 12 pencils to spontaneously implode, and more replacements are necessary.

12:50 -- I accept the first test handed in.

12:51 -- I point out to one overachiever that he has spelled his name wrong on the test.

12:55 -- I accept the fifteenth test handed in.

1:46 -- One minute later than scheduled (??), the principal comes on the speaker to announce that the fruit is ready to be picked up in the cafeteria. She says this as though it is the most normal thing in the world, even though we usually do fruit on Fridays, and it is patently ridiculous to do it during a scheduled practice test.

2:05 -- The last child turns in his test.

2:07 -- The fruit of the day -- blueberries -- are passed out to the awe of some and the disgust of others. I mention that some people think that blueberries keep cancer away, and they are suddenly a lot more appealing to some kids. One other boy decides that he doesn't like the first bite, so he spits it back into the bag, rendering that bag spoiled for everyone else.

2:40 -- I turn in my Scantron forms and return to my homeroom.

So what is a practice test day like for YOU? Bet you didn't see INTERACTIVE MONDAY sneaking up on you, eh? :)

Or, if you don't practice this way, what are actual TEST days like for you? Other than major headaches, of course...

T Minus 1

To paraphrase Jack Bauer -- this week is going to be the longest week of my life...

TAKS week is finally upon us. Today was actually the easy day. Tomorrow and Wednesday are all day testing -- standing and walking around the room, watching kids take a test. Thursday will be something new for me. I am giving a test one-on-one to a kid. This kid is special ed and requires the test to be read to him, and I volunteered to do it because this kid also comes from a culture that does not promote respect to women. He is HORRIBLE for his 3 teachers (all women), but when he gets put in my room for time-out or to finish a test, he is usually no problem for me. So I stepped up to administer this test. At least I'll get to sit down.

Today was pretty nice. After full-on review all of last week, today we just did a few morning math problems and then some fun and relaxing stuff. We measured how tall everybody was, for a reference point to help with any height questions that may arise. Everybody stood on a scale to get a reference point for any weight problem that may arise. Then we had a bull session about the test. The kids asked questions and I answered. All capped off with the fan favorite -- Math Quiz Game Show.

Now I can only keep my fingers crossed that they play the way we've practiced.

Top 10 Reasons I Love Benchmark Week

10) Standing around, with nothing to do but watch kids quietly take a test, is practically another mini-Christmas.

9) Gives me a chance to see how students other than my own can do on difficult, tricked-up, culturally-biased questions.

8) My psychic ability gets a workout when I predict who will be next to ask to use the restroom.

7) I enjoy witnessing Einstein's Theory of Relativity in action, where every 5 minutes seems like 2 hours.

6) It's just about the only chance I get the time to quietly count pi out to 254,000 places.

5) As an army of one, I do less all morning than most people do before 9 AM.

4) I swell up with pride every time I hear that one of my students finished their test in 30 minutes without showing any work -- that's like doing a crossword puzzle in ink!

3) Sometimes I fall asleep and wake to find that I'm a giant blue creature on another world -- watching giant blue kids quietly working on a test.

2) With half the day devoted to testing, and shortened periods with my classes, there's not as much time for the kids to waste each day.

1) There is always the knowledge that next week will NOT be a benchmark week.

Benchmark stumpers

Last week was Benchmark week at my school. Or, as I like to refer to it -- BM week. Four benchmarks! Four subjects! Four mornings of absolute joy!!!

I don't particularly care for benchmark tests. First of all, they often seem to be written by someone who hasn't spoken to a child in 10 years, much less actually TAUGHT one. The story problems always have really weird names in them (and believe me, I teach at a school with some really weird names) like Azcaputle and Terrenicavia. They contain questions that cover concepts that we have not even taught yet. And there is SO much reading involved that a lot of my kids who are good at math but not so great at reading just get swamped by all the verbiage.

Oh, and since we teachers are all a bunch of lying, cheating, stuck up, scruffy looking nerf herders, we certainly cannot be trusted to administer these tests to our own students. So I found myself in another 3rd grade teacher's room for those four mornings, watching her kids (and trying SO very hard not to tell them all the answers and fill in the bubble sheets for them!).

A few observations:

On the Social Studies test, a couple of kids said that a Good Citizen destroys property and breaks laws.

On the Science test, a few students said that it was ok to drink a strange laboratory liquid to identify it.

On the math test, 3 kids were absolutely stumped by the first page. They were not able to move forward until I pointed out to them that that was just the measurement page with rulers and unit conversions, and that question number ONE was on the following page...

TAKS Awareness

One of the tips in Darren's 31 Days to a Better Blog over at Problogger is to create a "Sneeze page," so named because it serves to hold a Kleenex up to your best posts. No wait, it's actually called sneeze because it sends readers throughout the archives of your blog.


Since I am an elementary school teacher in Texas, I thought I'd create a sneeze page that listed all of my posts related to our dreaded standardized test, the TAKS.


So, in no particular order, here are some of my best posts related to our friend, the TAKS man...

The Top 10 Rejected Meanings of TAKS -- This was a guest post over at So You Want To Teach. It's a list of phrases that TAKS ALMOST stood for. I left my favorite for number 1 -- This Assessment Kinda Sucks.

A Massive Coverup -- One of the ridiculous hoops we have to jump through every year before the test is covering everything on our walls and in the hallway. I wrote a letter (and of course never really sent it), telling the district that I couldn't possibly comply due to certain complications. Read it, I think you'll enjoy it.

What are We Really Testing Here? -- A TAKS test is a reading test, plain and simple. Sure, some of them have a math bent or a science bent, but first and foremost, they are a reading assessment. Is that fair??

Practice Like You Play -- You wouldn't bang the keys with your elbows at a piano recital after practicing the right way for so long, so why wouldn't you do the strategies on the TAKS that we've practiced in class for so long? This is my never-ending question to my kids year after year. Also a source of much frustration.

The Million Dollar Test -- This is a short story I wrote about a group of kids who are offered a Decent Proposal. An eccentric billionaire offers 1 million dollars (cue evil laugh) to anyone who can achieve a perfect score on the TAKS. It went over pretty well when I read it to my kids in class.



Testivus -- taken from the classic Seinfeld episode Festivus, of which the "Airing of Grievances" was an integral part, this post is a major rant against the current state of our testing. But there are also some suggestions presented, lest anyone think I'm merely whining.

Test Day. DUM DUM DUM!!!!

Today was the day of the TAKS.

YUCK.

I won't know for sure how my kids did for about 2 weeks, but I can speculate based on the reports I heard from the monitoring teachers. But we'll get to that in a bit.

First, let me share a few jokes. Since the test didn't actually begin until around 8:30, I had a bit of "dead time" to fill between when the kids entered the classroom and when the other teacher came in. Restroom break only took about 10 minutes, so afterwards, with the kids sitting there (and of course not allowed any kind of reading material -- they'd be getting enough of that later), I asked if any of the kids knew any good jokes.

They all told me no. Great. So I started racking my brain for jokes I knew which were clean AND simple to understand. I remembered a few really corny jokes:

What color is a burp? Burple

What did the rug say to the floor? "I've got you covered."

How do you catch a mouse on the computer? With an INTER-net.

These all received great big laughs.

Then I asked, "What did the fast tomato say to the slow tomato?" Catchup!

This was met with blank stares, so I spent the next 3 minutes explaining how ketchup was made out of tomatoes.

At that point, one of my goofballs said he knew a joke. "When did you find a cat named 13?"

I had no idea of course, so he told me the answer: 13.

The kids thought that was the funniest joke they had ever heard. Go figure.

Thanks for the nice comments on the story from yesterday. We read it to all of the 3rd graders at my school yesterday, and they all really seemed to enjoy it. As for how meaningful it was to them, well...

One of my classes was reportedly VERY thorough, taking their time, doing their work, and checking their answers. YAY!!

My other class, however, seemed just as knucklheady (it's a word) as ever. One of my angels even TORE OUT pieces from her test booklet so she could write notes to the girl in front of her!!! I later saw the note, and it said: "Hola!"

I'm sorry, but if you are actually going to go to the ridiculous extreme of MUTILATING the document that determines whether you go to the next grade, you had damn well better write something more than "HOLA!!" I'd better see Paul's Letter to the Ephesians, or the Gettysburg Address!!!

According to my old partner, Miss Jenn Ed, both of her sections (who are REALLY low readers) seemed to take the story to heart, or they at least spent a good long time on the test.

Strangely, the class of my colleague who printed out the million dollar bills was entirely finished by 10:30.

Anybody else have any stories to share from today?