Test Day

     I’ve been teaching the American Civil War for about 2-3 weeks now. I am learning a lot about little time there is for social studies. We’re only about two lessons in on the second third of what’s supposed to be a 3 week unit. It’s going to take at least three weeks of lessons to teach the material, especially if we want to do active things and projects instead of me just being a presenter, but it’s looking like it could take about 5 weeks to have enough opportunities to get in all the information.  The reason is that, whenever there is some kind of extra activity, such as DARE or 4-H, going on, it takes place in the afternoon. Well, science has recently been entered into AYP consideration, and science becomes the main subject of the afternoon if one or the other time slots are going to be filled. The point I’m making is that there is little time for social studies, and it’s making it a little tough on me to get to do as many lessons as possible that they are going to be highly interested in regardless of whether or not they are initially interested in the topic. For example, I had to completely nix a picture walk that I had planned out for them, but it got cut because we had a morning field trip that ran into the afternoon, leaving us time for science only.

     About this day in particular, I felt bad for some of the kids. They had three tests today, one of which I am accountable for because it was science. Some don’t mind taking tests, but I know it’s miserable for others.        So, to have three in one day can definitely be disheartening.

     For the science test, I used a test that the other fifth grade teacher generated. I don’t believe I will ever do this again. I’m not saying she wrote a bad test. That’s not what I’m saying at all. I can just see clearly now, that if a test is going to be written for your kids, you should definitely be the one to do it. And now that I look back on it, the thing I regret the most is that this test could have been a great opportunity to do a different type of formal assessment than just pencil and paper. I really wish I had brought in some plants, had the children classify them one on one with me, and made sure to figure out some way to assess all of the vocabulary within that. I think it would have been very possible, and probably been a more true assessment.