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Tuesday, May 25, 2010

Day two of assessments

The devotion today was about Sarah Josepha Buell who wrote Mary’s Little Lamb. She was a self-taught teacher who lobbied for the establishment of Thanksgiving holiday on the last Thursday of November. Mary’s Little Lamb made its way into school books and is easily recalled verse for verse by millions of children and adults alike. That seemingly small poem has had a lasting impression around the world. The same can be said of a mustard seed. Jesus used it to illustrate how faith in God can make God’s kingdom grow.

Today was another “give me more of the bible day.” We read four chapters from the book of Exodus. Chapter 9 continued with the plagues against the livestock, the festering boils, and the hail storm. Chapter 10 was the plague of the locusts and the three days of darkness. Chapter 11 was the death of all the first born sons. Chapter 12 was the instructions for the first Passover and the exodus from Egypt.

Day two assessment breakdowns are as follows: There were 118 minutes of total testing done today (4 minutes longer than yesterday.) It took 36 minutes for language expression, 38 for math computation, and 44 for math concepts and application. We did language expression and math computation before lunch and math concepts and application after lunch.

The language expression assessment. He did very well on this assessment. He easily identified the errors in each of the sentences, selected sound topic sentences, and developed good paragraphs. However, he was distracted and polishing the table with his shirt in a rhythmic way. When he missed questions # 19 and 20, I stopped the assessment and told him to take a five minute break “to get that energy out.” I then asked, “Are you sure you took your pill this morning?” Yes he did. Even though he was “busy” he only missed 4 out of 48 questions leaving the final tentative score as a 91%. JD was

The math computation assessment. This was a simple assessment to see if the student could add, subtract, multiple, and divide. In public school 75% of the EOG is calculator active. Which means they can use their calculators. I assumed this assessment was the same. It did not say on the test page for JD that a calculator could not be used so I let JD use a calculator. But then about half way through the assessment I pick up the teachers instructions and saw “Do not use calculators.” (What!? Oh man now what?) I told JD what the instructions said. He was extremely upset and you would have thought I sacrificed his dog Tater right in front of him. It was a awfully slow process to get through the rest of the assessment. JD was highly distracted from the very beginning of the assessment. Instead of focusing on the correct answer to the first addition problem he pointed out that there was not an answer for the letter “I.“ One question offered choices “A, B, C, D, or E,” to the next question offering choices “F, G, H, J, K.” (Where’s “I”? Who would notice that but my son?) JD moved around so much during the math assessment I got dizzy. At one point he even turned backwards in his chair after finishing a question. I had to ask him to turn back around to start the next question. Throughout the assessment I was constantly reminding him to “focus and settle down.” There was even tapping and humming for my entertainment as well. Despite all the “distractions” …to the best of my 5th grade math education I saw that he only missed one question out of 44 for a final possible score of 97%. (And in the process I pulled out so many of my hairs…literally. I kept having to swipe them off my papers. Oh well that assessment portion is over.)

The Math Concepts & Application assessment. This was the portion of the math assessment with word problem type questions that may or may not require addition, subtraction, multiplication, and division. He did well during this test, but it was still like trying to give an assessment to a kid jacked up on candy who just got of “the wildest roller coaster ride EVER!” The best I can tell he only missed 3 out of 50 questions for a possible score of 94%.

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