Easter 2011
Dottie with an Easter lily and cake from Deb, Jaeden (who’s finishing up Kindergarten), Jemma and I, and introducing Jaevia, who’s two weeks old today!
Games
So one of my students comes to school with a broken arm this morning. He said he fell off a rock. I’m thinking a little rock, and know this is something I could do, but not most normal people. (Note that I am not really putting I and normal in the same sentence.) Finally I asked him how he fell off a rock. They were playing crossing the border, where you jump over a fence and run, but he landed on a rock and then fell and broke his arm. That’s as endearing as when, years ago, I saw two girls playing drive-by shooting.
For those who are counting, there are 22 school days and 35 calendar days left of school.
AIMS. Fin.
For those of you whose lives don’t revolve around standardized testing in Southern Arizona, this past week was AIMS week. AIMS week takes people who might have had a shred of decency left and, well shreds them. For example, we are expected to walk around the whole time. That’s three hours of pacing in circles. The end result is that I ended up envying the kids, because at least they could sit!
Highlights of the week? Hmm. 4-5 children filled in a random letter on the front of their answer booklet instead of the letter matching their test book. Their success on the test worries me if they can’t even follow the directions before the book is opened. One left off one letter of his four-letter first name. He later decided that there was no need to write down math problems to solve them; he would try to do them in his head instead. He must have a very speedy head, because he just zipped through the math test, finishing quicker than people who had actually passed math chapter tests this year. It’s a miracle. Putting test answers and sample problem answers on the wrong tests added to the joy of the week. One girl complained she was nauseous and in my most caring manner I pointed out that she was more than welcome to go throw up as soon as she answered the only question she had left. Heartless? Maybe. But any test questions left unfinished on the test on progress are therefore marked wrong. She made up the second test today, and I think she was done as quickly as miracle boy. Etc. Each night I went home, exhausted. I accomplished nothing noteworthy this week, and even had a hard time keeping up with my A to Z Challenge entries. I still haven’t done today’s.
In other news. I’m taking a 6-week technology standards course on-line through the state. I’m really liking the class. This past weekend I had to take an assessment (a pre-test that I think is used for high school students). Some of it was hands-on application stuff and some was questions. Personally, I thought it was a lot of fun (the hands-on part). So yesterday I got my score back. I got every question right. Every one. Woot! It’s not for a grade as far as I know, except for getting credit for having taken it when I was supposed to, but still!
As part of that class, we have to do a unit project with our class. I decided that I’m going to have my students’ final research projects be presented in the form of a PowerPoint presentation. Today was my observation by my supervisor, so what I did was create a PowerPoint this past week, which was also fun. It included a lot of bad or so-so examples. They had a note-taking sheet that we wrote down key ideas based on what I did right or wrong, that will help them when they do their own. Then on the back they drew two slides of their own, of a “bad example” and a “good example” and they shared them with each other. My supervisor is great at observations, because she participates as well. She did her own examples and shared them with some of the kids. My hope is that when they do their final presentations, their families and our administration can come. Wouldn’t that be cool, to live in our neighborhood and come to school and see your 4th grader’s group PowerPoint? Especially since they have no computer class at all and very little access to technology.
