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February 20, 2008

Testing One, Two

I took a test last night. It was a grammar test. I don’t believe I’ve had a grammar test since high school. Did you know modifiers can dangle and commas can have splices? I’m sure I learned this all when I was 12, but it’s been a while since I was 12.

Last night, though, I had all the feelings of a 12-year-old facing the “big test.” It was crunch time. Did I study enough? Do I know all the parts of speech? Will I pass?

I wasn’t the only one who was dealing with these feelings. There are nine of us taking a university class on improving writing. My guess is the average age in the class is 45+. We’re people who are working or retired. We have lives. We aren’t students trying to decide which career to go into. We’re professional folks trying to improve our writing. So why were we so up tight over a grammar test?

One man joked about not passing this test might ruin his chances for graduate school. Another said she knew she hadn’t studied enough. All of us were concerned about how much time he’d give us to complete the questions. None of us needs the units. We’re all taking this for content not grades. So why the anxiety?

Because we’re all 12-years-old again facing the big exam. That last sentence was a fragment, by the way, and it needs revising. I know that because my class taught me to notice sentence fragments and because my computer told me the same thing. I’m going to leave it alone. That’s the nice thing about taking a writing class; you can know when it’s wrong and leave it anyway.

Back to class-we were all feeling those old anxiety feelings about test taking. I couldn’t help but wish I had known different feelings in grade school. What if I’d been able to take a test just to see what I knew? What if the test was diagnostic and would show what the teacher could stop going over because I had it, but it also showed what areas I needed more work on? What if tests hadn’t been competitive and based on a curve? What if it tests were more about what and how to teach than about how much I didn’t know compared to the smart kid in class?

Hm…I’ve been in education for a long time. Where I haven’t been for a long time is on the other end of the test taking. This is going to mean some rethinking for me about all the tests we give and why we give them. I don’t have answers today. I have questions. I was supposed to answer questions last night. It seems I raised more than I answered.

I rarely solicit comments in my blog because I usually end up with ads for Viagra or reducing my mortgage so I send most of them to spam mail, but I’m open for this one. How do you feel about testing? What do you think of the testing we do in school? What would you do to make it better? Any comments?

Posted by Dr Joni at 08:32 AM | Comments (0)

February 15, 2008

PreSchool Foundations in "Parent-Ease"

Four and five-year-olds go to school just like the big kids. Those who don’t go to school are learning faster than you can figure out how to use you new ipod. What are they learning? Anything they see, hear, taste, or touch. If you don’t believe me, listen to their conversation with their favorite pet or their baby brother. “Go sit in the corner, you’ve been bad,” tells you they’ve been listening to you even when you think they haven’t.

So have you figured out what you’d like them to know and remember? If you haven’t, the California Department of Ed Child Development Division is here to help you. They started working several years ago to identify what preschools need to learn and what would be helpful for them to know when they start to school-big kid school. Two weeks ago the Learning Foundations, identifying learning skills for social/emotion skills, language and literacy, math and English language development, were approved and released.

Now you know. Well, you sort of know. The foundations are on the CDE website and available for use. Who’s using them? Probably not many folks yet. It takes a while for word to get out. It takes a while for the administrators and staff to be trained and held accountable for what’s being taught. It just takes a while.

How about you, Mom or Dad? Are you ready to help your child? I haven’t found many parents who don’t want to help, especially preschoolers. Here are a couple ideas for you that will give you some direction and are parent friendly. I’ll include the foundations, but, I’m taking the prerogative of rewording them a bit. We educators sometimes have a tendency to use more complex words than are needed. I want to make it easier for all of us.

Science Walk: Take a walk in your backyard. Say the words for what you see. “There’s a yellow flower. That plant is green. Fido is running across the yard. Here he comes. Throw the ball for him. There is a bird on the fence.” Plants and animals are all part of science and in this case are a part of language development.

Foundation: 1.0 Language Use and conventions
1.1 Use language to communicate with others in familiar social situations for a variety of basic purposes, including describing, requesting, commenting, acknowledging, greeting, and rejecting.

In “Parent Ease”-Kids learn to talk by listening to you and other people talk.

So the bottom line is talk about everything you’re doing with them. Oh, and enjoy the walk. The weather’s been great for it.

Posted by Dr Joni at 08:20 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

February 02, 2008

New Books for Old Brings More than Expected

Last week a diverse group of parents in the Live Oak School District came in dripping from the rain to the cafeteria at Luther Elementary School to hear about the new California Social Studies textbook adoption and to find out how they could help their children learn the subject. It wasn’t difficult to demonstrate some of the first grade learning standards. First graders learn about their neighborhood and their heritage. In the workshop were at least four different backgrounds making up the neighborhood of the school. Some parents shared they were born and raised in Live Oak or in nearby parts of California, others were from Mexico, still others were from India, and one family was from Pakistan. Three interpreters translated in order for us to talk with one another.

Family history, heritage, culture and language were all in evidence in the group. Parveen Bains, the Luther Vice-Principal, was born in the area while her family is from India. She speaks Punjabi and, although she didn’t say so, I imagine her first grade son, Arjun, speaks Punjabi as well. Nicki Llerenas, one of the workshop teachers demonstrating activities parents can do at home, spoke in both English and Spanish for the parents. She would occasionally forget to let the translator give her information in Punjabi as well.

In my part of the workshop on the second grade learning standards about famous people, I included George Washington and Abraham Lincoln. The parents added Benito Juarez and Gandhi to the list.

Geography, especially the study of maps, took on a different meaning as we moved into looking at the upper grade curricula. For the early grades we talked about maps of the neighborhood and town where the children live. By third and fourth grade we were talking about the state of California as something they know, but for fifth grade and up, if we were to stay in line with heritage and family history, we couldn’t just talk about the United States map. We had to move to the world map to show the rest of North American, South America, Asia, and Europe. These are the backgrounds of the children at Live Oak and the parents in the workshop. That’s their history. That’s their world.

In school the subject of Social Studies is the heart of our family, community, nation, and the world. You can take a vital role in helping your child understand social studies, by sharing the stories of your family, your background, your traditions and culture while encouraging your child to know and understand the background of their friends in the neighborhood.

Posted by Dr Joni at 10:17 AM