The past two weeks have been an interesting experience. The students have started doing MCA testing so the kids were either always very nervous or extremely worn out from the all day testing. It was interesting to watch how Lily tried to get her students relaxed about the test. One day she had the students play a money game where they would move their pieces around the board either gaining or losing their hard earned (fake) cash. This game was helpful because she let the students be as loud and energetic as they wanted to and it often made them forget about the test that was looming ahead of them. Another teacher in the school used a different method to relieve the student's stress. he could been seen out the window leading his students through a marital arts workout and you could tell that nearly every student was having fun. Along with the testing I had the opportunity to help with leading kids through the test. It was interesting to be on the other side of these high stakes testing from the normal student position I had only knew before. It brought back a wave of memories of the days in high school when the entire day was intended to complete these tests.
When the MCA testing was not going on I would often be working one on one with students that were trying to finish projects they had not finished. Since it is a reading class that I help with, most of the time the projects were either writing poetry or researching for an article they had to complete. I have found that during these one on one times students almost never want to work on the project. They would rather fire a barrage of questions at me about what it is like to be in college. This shows that at least at the elementary level the idea of going to college is something they want to some day make real, something that was very heartening to see.
One more week to go!
No comments:
Post a Comment