For starters, I wish Karrigan's dog Sophie could physically share some of the energy she wakes up with each morning. Of course, some of her energy is her youth, and some of her energy is the anticipation that there just may be rabbits in the yard to go chase. But when it's time to WAKE UP, that girl has shaking and quaking and wiggling and licking going on big time! Usually, she waits for the alarm (generally at 5 a.m.), but sometimes if she thinks it should be time to get up and either Amber or I have appeared to stir, she quietly climbs the stairs to the bed, walks on the bed gingerly, and analyzes the situation - looking for open eyes or some type of signal indicating that she is welcome. If those things don't occur after about thirty seconds, she quietly exits.
I learned a little more about the school year this weekend.
1) MAP testing stands for Measured Academic Progress testing. And now that I understand the acronym and a little more about the process after our 1:30 early dismissal professional development session on Friday, I'm even more frustrated. I'm pretty sure that what the juniors don't need is additional testing in a different format than the SAT. And I'm no more closer to figuring out how our school is going to complete this testing than I was before 1:30 p.m. last Friday. We generated questions, though, for our administrator, so hopefully answers and progress will arrive soon.
2) We - the English III students and I - have a long road to climb towards better being able to effectively complete and SAT style essay question. I scored the pre-assessments that I had recently distributed to the students, and the results were frustrating. I anticipate that the analysis scores are going to be low because this type of essay response is new to the students. I did hope, though, that the reading and writing scores would be higher. I'd like to believe the low reading scores are more about a lack of thoughtful effort more than weakness in reading. At least, that premise is what I'm going to go with. Unfortunately, the writing scores were really, really bad. And how difficult is it to write an essay with an effective introduction, body paragraphs that discuss what was previewed in the introduction, and a closing that reviews the major points that were previewed in the introduction and discussed in the body? And how challenging is it to understand that a creative attention-getting lead is needed to begin the essay, and strong wrap-up clincher statement is needed to end the essay? Shouldn't those things be a given at this point of the students' education. Should 80% of the 11th grade students be able to write at least somewhat of an effective and efficient five paragraph essay? Apparently, this is not the case with the Class of 2020, as we currently stand at about 10% of the students.
3) The honeymoon is officially over. Students that have not completed work or have figured that just slopping something together and calling it effort will soon be realizing that those things are damaging to a student's grade. And the really unfortunate students will be the ones that don't bother to monitor their emails and their grades to discover their situation, nor are they fortunate enough to have a parent or guardian that assists them with this endeavor. With any luck at all, I will be receiving email requests from students (or parents/guardians) informing me that they have revised their ENVISIONME sites or completed their Khan Academy assignments and would like me to score those items again for additional credit instead of the current grade or zero in Lumen.
And the learning is not quite over. Today the students will complete an SAT style reading assessment - two fiction/narrative passage, twenty questions, in twenty-six minutes. If these scores reflect the number of "readers" in the class, these will be low as well. A "good score" to shoot for is 13-14 out of 20, and it would be great if at least 50% of the students achieved that level.
But hey, I had a great 3-day Labor Day Weekend, and it's already Tuesday. Now where is that dog who I know is ready to go on her morning walk before school!
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