Friday, ISTEP Eve

It's not actually ISTEP Eve for 8th graders though. Their testing starts Tuesday. And since Tuesday is only a math test, I don't know if I really even count that either.

By the way, I've said it before and I'll say it again--changing the schedules of your typical middle school student is like changing the feeding times for a monkey. They just go nuts. The two-hour delay turned your sons and daughters into lunatics. Lovable lunatics, sure, but nevertheless, still lunatics.

For what I think might be the last time, I talked about constructed responses. I used a couple analogies (dirty windows and toilet paper) to keep the important (but easy) things they need to remember about doing well on constructed responses in their heads. They had a chance to finish (or in some cases, rewrite) their "Ransom of Red Chief" constructed responses which I'll grade over the weekend before determining if they need any more last-minute practice before ISTEP.

We had our vocabulary quiz. It was only 25 questions. I've graded two classes, and I'm not too happy. I really thought this would be a lot easier and that there would be a lot more high scores. And I do have a ton of 92, 96, and 100 percents. Unfortunately, there are a lot in the 20-40 percent range, too. Very few students get C's on these tests. They're either working and paying attention and studying a little bit and getting A's or they're doing next-to-nothing and failing.

These next couple weeks, we're reviewing the word parts from lists 1-10. I didn't want to give them new word parts over ISTEP week because I want their focus to be on impressing the ISTEP people. They do have a sheet with all 250 (can you believe it's that many? wow!) word parts from this school year. Their job is to go through it and circle the ones they need help with.

Make sure they're reading this weekend! I have had a handful of students already finish their book. I gave them the option of reading something else or reading Hunger Games, a book that I've never read but want to find out more about. They're going to fill me in and let me know if I should teach this novel next year.

Have a great weekend!