Standardized Testing Week (1 of 3)

The testing environment.

This week has been the school's first time utilizing an online standardized test. I'm excited about the data that the MAP test is purported to provide for each student, and glad that the glitches to moving to a digital test (away from the very old school practice of bubble in tests with number two pencils) were minor. The bumpiness of working make-up tests into our daily activities with the requirement of a potentially different online proctor to restart a testing session I have already used remains to be seen.

I had the students reflect on their first MAP Test session, and got some interesting responses. Some were predictable, like the student who wrote "Testing was lame," and underlined it several times. My favorite one is not pictured, but said, "If you notice I got a question wrong, I clicked the right answer, but then it said I didn't." I'm not even sure what the student experienced to respond that way, but I love the confidence that allowed him to think he only missed one question, and that it was due to a technical difficulty.

Although this week was less disrupted than my previous standardized testing weeks, I am not very excited for the disruption to come again two more times this year. I am hopeful, and even a little expectant, that the data gathered through this process will warrant three disruptions per year. Planning for less homework and less rigorous lessons this week so the kids could be less frazzled for our afternoon testing slot (when we had access to the chrome books) wasn't too difficult this time of year, when we are ramping up in every subject area. But I'm less certain it will be as easy to pause again the next two times.

I did go ahead and teach my students about the history of the theory of continental drift. But since I do this largely through YouTube music videos (one by The Amoeba People and one made by a sixth grade class from California), with a Bill Nye top 100 scientist clip in the mix, I don't think the students felt too overwhelmed by the new information. Several students were excited to play with continent puzzle pieces in a recreation of Alfred Wegener's process that led him to propose the theory of continental drift in the first place. And the fact that their knowledge product to show they understand the history of this theory emerging from the laughable ruminations of a meteorologist to an almost universally accepted scientific theory, is a comic strip retelling helps them to see it as a fun lesson. Perfect for testing week.

Even though it has been a long week (and it's not quite over yet), I still find myself believing one of the catch phrases of my boss, which I posted on his door before school started (in the style of a set of IB attribute posters), "Holy sugar, we can do this!"