Thursday

I gave the students one more vocabulary review sheet. We did part of it together, but they'll need to finish it at home. If they use that and the worksheet from earlier, it will help them on the test. They will need to bring the worksheet to class tomorrow. We'll go over it together, and then they'll turn it in. If they can't get an A+ on that, I don't know what else I can do for them.

Sixty minutes of today's class was for ISTEP practice. They read about a border collie named Rico and answered three constructed response questions. Then, they read three quotes about dreams from Eleanor Roosevelt, Walt Disney, and the poet William Yeats; chose the quote that is most meaningful to them, and wrote an essay. I'll use the 4-point ISTEP extended response rubric to grade that one.

If they didn't like the nonfiction text about border collies or the essay, they can blame the ISTEP people. This was exactly what the test looked like last year, and they had the same amount of time to finish it up. Some of them learned that they need to pace themselves a little better because they were not able to get done.

I will be grading those this weekend so that we can learn from them early next week.

Reminder: The vocabulary test is tomorrow! I've already got it printed out and everything.