Day two of assessment week

As I sit here typing this blog I so want to add humor but I simply can’t. It was an extremely frustrating day for the math assessment.

Today we did a short review of complete sentences, simple subjects, simple predicates, combining sentences, topic sentences, and supporting sentences before the language expression assessment. JD ROCKED this test! I can’t be for sure, but I think he only maybe missed 2-3 questions out of 48. It took him 55 minutes to complete it. He was nervous again. He was rubbing his fingers through his hair leaving hair all over the assessment pages. He got up for a tissue and used that as a distraction tool. I asked him to throw it away. He was moving his legs back and forth so his pants made a rhythmic sound. He was also dropping his arms off the sides of his chair and swinging them back and forth. When he read aloud he did so in a British accent. He was so busy I’m surprised he found time to answer his questions. (LOL) I thought it was odd that he kept reading a sentence as “The farmer raises (it was raise) cows.” He kept saying raises instead of how it was written - raise. So he thought that answer was correct. Oh well. I also know I need to work on transitional words like: similarly, consequently, subsequently, furthermore, however, in contrast, and for example.

Now for the Math Computation assessment. Oh where do I start? Okay from the beginning. The assessment rules stated “you should not use calculators.” We started the simple addition, subtraction, multiplication, and division test at 11:58 am. Fourteen minutes later JD only answered 5 problems out of 44. (Oh this is going to take awhile.) The reason it took so long was because JD is apparently allergic to #2 pencil lead, or so it seems. I asked him to “pick up the pencil and write it out.“ I guess he thought he’d lost his right arm in a freak accident or something because it took him awhile to locate the bright pink pencil in front of him and then grip it. That’s also when all the drama began. The moaning and whining were ridiculous. I stopped the assessment after five problems and emailed Jeff so he could have a pep talk with JD. I think I’m extremely patient with JD during our school days and I really thought keeping my cool today was the best course of action for JD to complete his assessment today, but truth be told…I was furious and wanted to scream, “Pick up the stinkin pencil and write of the five little digits and subtract them, for crying out loud!” But I didn’t…

Take two…after a short dip in the pool with Sarah and the girls we came back in at 12:33 and started question #6. Thirty minutes later we finally reached question #21. I’ve said, “Write it out” so many times in the past 30 minutes I’ll be having nightmares about it tonight.

Take three…after a sandwich and another dip in the pool we started question 22 at 1:40 pm. I didn’t write down where we stopped at but another break happened at 2:10 pm.

Take four…We’re in the homestretch and I’m ready to start drinking hard alcohol! I let JD finish the remaining 15 or so questions on the calculator. (After all the rules said, “Should not, not do not.” During one of the times JD was writing out a math problem and figuring it out I went online and ordered "Arithmetricks: 50 Easy Ways to Add, Subtract, Multiply, and Divide Without a Calculator." JD will slowly work on this throughout the summer break. So an assessment that should have taken 38 minutes according to the rules took JD 1 hour and 45 minutes. As slowly as he calculated on paper he still got the right answer on all but two questions. Yippie.

Even after all of that math drama can you believe I thought I could squeeze in another short assessment? I tried to have JD complete the Study skills assessment but quickly realized the error of my ways when he just would not settle down enough to focus on finding the author on a library catalog card. I stopped the assessment and said to myself, “Well, the testing days will have to be extended from three to four.” Last year we were able to do 10 different assessments in three days.

So day two of the assessment week is finally over.  JD ended the day with, "Mama, I don't think God helped us out today." I laugh inside as I'm typing this because, Yes, Jonathan...God actually helped you to live another day my little friend."  His guardian angels were working overtime to cover my mouth from screaming at JD and having hours of crying and misery and he didn't even know it.  Thanks guys, I owe ya one.

Day one of assessments

We started day one of JD’s assessment at 10:40 am, after a breakfast of Chex cereal and Organic Fat Free milk. Sarah buys organic everything and JD accidentally poured it in his bowl and this set off his day. (Grr!) Before we started on the assessment I emailed Jeff and asked him for prayer that JD doesn't get stressed out.

The first test of the day was vocabulary. Twenty minutes into the assessment JD asked for a “Poop break.” He came back and completed the assessment in a total of 47 minutes. I even stopped the clock for this break. Last year it only took 20 minutes. It looks like he only missed three questions out of 40. He didn't know the opposite of slacken. (Resume, adjust, quicken, support). He was stuck on slacken "not even being a word." I said, “Is there a prefix or suffix you could drop to figure this out?” Next was fill in the blank. He missed “Prior to the development of more _____ machines, only certain coins could be used. (The possible choices were: automatic, authentic, methodical, and sophisticated.) He couldn't pronounce sophisticated so he didn't even look at it as a possible choice. He also did not know what bewildering meant. But that’s okay. He got all three of the Latin or Greek words correct and did great on suffixes and prefixes. He also did a super job finding a word that fit in both blank spots of two sentences. It was frustrating trying to get him to stop being ticked with me. I told him to read aloud all questions and possible answers so I could see he understood what he read. I also told him to keep sounding out words until they sounded like a word he has heard before. This made him mad and we struggled with him slamming his finger down to show me what was the correct answer. I put a stop to his attitude, but only for a short time. He laid his head down repeatedly and I asked that he sit up.

The second test was on comprehension. JD was still ticked because I had him read aloud all questions and possible answers. He tended to gravitate toward one answer before reading all of the possible choices. On a few questions he would say, “I don’t know the answer.” I had to say, “Reread the passage or story and find the answer.” He still maintained his attitude during this assessment. But he ROCKED it I don't think he missed any out of 50 questions! Though some are questionable even for me...JD spent 51 minutes on this assessment.

The third assessment of the day was spelling. JD bombed the spelling test, but I'm not worried about that. The majority of the questions were a list of four possible spellings of a word and he had to pick the correct one. Out of 30 spelling words he only got 13 right. I was amazed at how he got some really big words like: regulations, distribute, sympathetic, and influence right, but missed some smaller words. I admit, even I had to look some of them up in the dictionary. This assessment took only twenty minutes to complete.

The fourth and final assessment of the day was the language mechanics assessment. This was on punctuation and capitalization. I had to stop the assessment 15 questions in because JD was extremely fidgety and missed two in a row. He kept running his hands inside his pants to rub his thighs, he was jumpy, and he was pulling his hair out methodically. After our short break I was secretly entertained by JD beat boxing, snapping his fingers, and whistling. He didn't even realize he was doing it. (LOL) He missed 5 out of 36 questions on this assessment. He was again, not reading all of the possible answers and had his head down. I know now that I need to work on letter writing with him. This assessment took 40 minutes to complete.

Total testing time on day one was 158 minutes or 2 ½ hours. Thank goodness we are done for the day. Hopefully tomorrow JD will have a better attitude. I’m so over the age of 12! (Has puberty started? I think YES!)

A busy review week

Wednesday-Friday, May 18-20, 2011
We spent these three days reviewing all of the math lessons we did from August to May. UGH! That’s a lot of formulas to keep straight in our heads.

In between reviewing I was preparing the church ministry boards for various ministries.  The ministry fair is this Sunday and I'm heading it up. 

We had another game tonight. Do I really have to tell you how it ended?

Tuesday, May 17, 2011

It was another good school day

We did a devotion and then moved onto T4L. 

Our lessons in Time4Learning are now completed. We completed the last math and language arts lesson for the year. Now it's review, review, review.

The last math lesson that needed to be completed is now done. It was about writing algebraic expressions for word problems. Ugh! How frustrating. But were done now. JD scored a 100% on the quiz.

JD also finished up his last two language arts quizzes in T4L today. They were about comparing and contrasting stories and passages. He scored two 100%‘s.

So we went out after dinner tonight and bought some ice cream and fixings to have a Time4 Learning party.

Monday, May 16, 2011

A good day

It was a busy weekend.  Saturday we had the rescheduled Spring Fling.  That is the opening ceremony for baseball.  Then, Jeff had to go to the church to prepare a meal for the Daycare Appreciation meal.  Then, we had a baseball game.  We lost this one too.  (Sad I know.) 

Sunday was the AWANA end of year awards ceremony and Teacher Appreciation meal for all of my teachers.  Jonathan was awarded his two medal awards for finishing book two and three.  Jeff prepared the teacher appreciation meal too.  (Thanks Jeff, you're a real trooper.)

Our day was a bit mixed up today. We did science first. JD and I watched a live streaming of Space Shuttle Endeavour's last flight. Kids in school won't see it live, but JD will. It’s Endeavour’s last take off. It was cool until they showed the office in Houston. It was just a bunch of boring rocket scientists doing nothing but working on their computers. We just made up conversations for them because we couldn't hear any of their conversations.

We did our devotion and moved onto T4L. 

The math lesson today was frustrating. It was about combinations and permutations. A permutation is an arrangement of items in a particular order like: President and Vice President. If there are five people running for class president then this is a permutation. A combination is an arrangement of items in which the order is not important. An example would be winners of 1st, 2nd, and 3rd place in a race. And of course there are more formulas to memorize. And we also learned the new term “factoral” today. An example of a factorial is 9. You would take 9x8x7x6x5x4x3x2x1 and that would equal 362880. (Really? Because I’m going to use this when?)  JD scored a 90% on the quiz. 

We did the T4L today for language arts. It was about the Author's Purpose. It was Quiz two from yesterday. JD scored a solid 100%. Then JD did a interactive guided lesson on Inferencing. And he took the corresponding quiz and scored another 100%.

The last school related task of the day was reading his magazine for thirty minutes.

We had another game tonight.  You guessed it we lost.  I wished these boys would stop having attitudes about not pitching.  It sure makes for a long game with all the whining.  One boy was benched for this game because of disrepect.  This is an ongoing thing with this boy.  And it spreads like a disease through the entire team. 

Probability...no problem

I got so far behind with my blogging that I missed a devotion somewhere between last week and this week. We did do a devotion today but I posted it under 12 May. I need to do a better job of blogging daily and not weekly.

Even though today was the scary day of Friday the 13th, we had a good school day.

The first math lesson was called “Using probability.” It gave us the formula for the number of ways the event can occur to the # of equally likely outcome. The dice rolling a 1 would be 1/6. Then we learned the compliment to probability. That is the opposite of the ways the event can occur. The dice rolling something other than a 1 would be the compliment and that # is 5/6. Then, we had to take to event like flipping a coin and rolling a dice and figure out the formula for (example) getting a heads and a 1 would be ½ times 1/6 = 1/12 of a chance. Confusing I know. But we finally got it today! JD scored a 100% on this quiz. The second math lesson was call “dependent and independent” events. Bottom line: Dependent means it does not affect the outcome and Independent means it does affect the outcome or you don’t replace a name from a hat or you eat the jelly bean. JD scored a 90% on this quiz. There are only two more math lessons left for the year! We’re having a Math party soon!

The language arts lesson today was the Author’s Purpose quiz. He only scored a 67%. I will have to spend a bit more time with him reviewing Author’s Purpose lessons with him. As a matter of facts I will review all of those comprehension lessons before the assessment.

Thursday, May 12, 2011

A tough math day

We had a good school day but the math lesson were terribly difficult.  The language arts lesson also threw JD for a loop.

The devotion was about Villains. It listed: Cruella De Vil, Jafar, Captain Hook, and Shere Khan among others. These were all characters that were mean and had murderous intents. A lot of people today claim that right and wrong don’t exist. However, right and wrong is not up to you and me, it’s decided by God. He has listed right and wrong for us in the 10 Commandments. God said we are to be self-controlled, “kind to each other, tenderhearted, forgiving one another, just as God through Christ has forgiven you.”

The first math lesson of the day was called fair games and probability. It taught us how to use the formula to figure out favorable outcomes. Take a spinner numbered 1-6. The chances of spinning and even # is 3/6th or ½ simplified. Then the lesson taught us about fair and unfair events. A fair event would be as likely as unlikely. Like a coin toss. There’s a 50/50 chance of getting either heads or tails. A spinner with the numbers 1-7 would be unfair if we needed an even # because there are more odd #‘s than even. We missed two questions on the quiz and I still don’t understand how to get the answer. (Just like some fraction lessons…oh well.) So JD scored an 80% on this quiz. The second math lesson was extremely difficult. It was called “probability a compliment.” First, we learned that the outcome of a event can be written as a fraction, decimal, or a percentage. It can also be labeled as impossible, unlikely, half as likely as unlikely, likely, and certain. We learned about independent events and their outcome as well as their compliments. A compliment is the opposite of the way the event can occur. A dice rolling something other than a 1 would be the compliment and that # is 5/6. This was a tough lesson for JD and I to figure out. We only got a 64% together on the lesson. We pushed on through the quiz and scored an 80%. This is one of those lessons I end with saying, “I hope we don’t see that on the assessment this year.”

The language arts lesson today was the Author’s Purpose. The first thing he did was read stories and passages with an interactive guided lesson. He will take the quiz tomorrow. 

Wednesday, May 11, 2011

A busy errands day

I counted today as a school day even though we did not do any computer lessons because…I can! We did not do any school work because the day was filled with multiple errands. It started by taking Daniel to an interview in Fayetteville. Turns out there were about eight people in the waiting room with no interviewer there. I had so much more to do today than to wait for hours for someone to interview all those backed up people first and then Daniel. Daniel made the decision himself to walk out on the interview. (I was very thankful, because I also had to entertain the grand girls in the back of my Ford.

The next thing JD and I did after we dropped off Daniel and the babies was go to the church to set up the displays I made last night at midnight. Then, I had a small meeting with the pastor about the ministry fair.

We left the church for a bite to eat at Sonic before JD‘s afternoon appointment with his pediatrician for a Zertec refill. He grew ½ inch and kept off those three pounds from the last doctors appointment at Womack.

Once the doctor’s appointment was over JD and I rested at home for about an hour and headed back to the church for a skit rehearsal and a small party for JD and the rest of the kids that recently did a short play at church. (I have a closet actor here you know.) While JD was occupied I ran around the church politicking to fill those remaining ministry positions in the church. It’s tiring asking the same people over and over again to hand in their forms. I still have 21 people to corner, I mean to gently talk to them and coax them into handing me their filled out forms.

We had another baseball game tonight. You guessed it we lost again. It’s our lack of a good pitcher or pitchers.

A busy day

It was a busy day of double lessons and ministry boards. 

The devotion today was about self-control. It started out with a list of things that could make you lose your self-control. Even though some things get on our last nerve we all have the choice to ignore it and press on. That’s a tough choice to make for some people. Self-control is a fruit of the spirit. And Psalm 4:4 say, “Don’t sin by letting anger gain control over you. Think about it overnight and remain silent.”

The first math lesson today was about drawing conclusions and justifying our answers. It taught JD the term prediction. Basically that is making an educated guess and being able to justify why. Then we had to test his answer with reasonableness by asking ourselves, “Is the answer reasonable?” or “Does it make sense?” One example was 2n+5=13. First we did 13-5=8 and predicted that 2 x’s something equaled 8. So 2x4=8. The “n” in the problem equaled 4. Then we learned that distance on a grid always has to be a positive #. Example: -15 miles x 6 miles = 90 square miles. JD scored a 90% on this quiz. The second math lesson was called limited possibilities. It taught us how to use a sample space or listing all of the possible outcomes to an event. While that is effective it’s much quicker just to do the math. If you have 4 pairs of socks, 2 shorts, and 8 shirts you just times all of them together. Example: 4x2=8, 8x8=64 possible outfits. (time to go shopping now…) JD scored a 100% on this quiz. He was all over this lesson.

The language arts lesson was about Cause and Effect. It was an interactive guided lesson where JD read stories and passages to figure out the cause and effect of the situations presented. He scored an 80% on the quiz.

I was working on some Nominating Committee Ministry Fair displays for church. I finished an AWANA board, a Finance board, and a Baptism and Usher board to display tomorrow as example for the rest of the committees to follow. We’re hoping to sign more that 46 people up for all the various ministry positions around the church.

Monday, May 9, 2011
A doubly good day

It was a busy weekend and a doubly good school day.

The Pirates had a games Saturday. We lost but not by much; the final score was 8-6. Jeff had a prior golf appointment so I told the team, “Let’s win this for Coach Jeff.”  JD got a double at bat.  Yippee!

I hope all of the Mother’s out there had a Good Mother’s day. I know I did. I wish Mother’s day could last six months, but JD disagrees.

I received another FedEx package this morning before school even started. I have looked and looked and I don’t know what I have to drive to Raleigh for, other than a possible psychological appointment. I was already seen for PTSD about six months after retirement.

I decided this is crunch time for Faith Christian Academy. JD will only be doing math lessons and reading comprehension lessons until his assessment shows up. We will double up on both subjects until then.

The devotion was about breaking your usual way of thinking. There was an exercise with 9 dots arrange in row of three under one another. The object of the lesson was to connect all of the dots using four straight lines, without lifting your pencil. There really is a way of doing it you just have to literally think outside of the box. It’s just like getting to know God and His ways. The more you know the more you will begin to think in ways others just can’t understand. Accepting God as your authority allows you to know right and wrong and our thought and attitudes will change. With God’s limitless thinking, the possibilities are endless.

This first math lesson we did today was about distance on a line. We relearned the quadrants on a graph and plotting points. We used those plotting points to figure out the difference between the two points. The second lesson was about the terms horizontal and vertical lines on a graph. Then we learned the distance on a graph must be in “absolute value” or always a positive #. JD scored a 80% on the quiz.

The language arts lesson was on Interpreting Charts and Graphs. It was an interactive guided lesson where he read stories or passages that include some pretty tough charts, maps, and graphs. I actually sat down for one of the maps and I couldn’t figure it out. JD also took the related quiz and scored an 80%.

We had a long baseball practice tonight. Maybe the boys will remember all that they were taught and use it during our next games.