an educational economy

Life, at this exact moment, is all about surviving the next two weeks. The enormous amount of papers, assignments, grading, and pre-Thanksgiving stress leading right up to the next derby bout of Antoinettes versus Punches. But I did just get back from a pretty cool presentation on a third grade class room that is run like a corporation. It gives me hope for the rest of my school year, that it can be saved. Basically this guy started and economy in his classroom, beginning much like I had wanted to do originally with paying for desired behaviors. I just wasn't on my game enough at the start of school to implement anything effectively. But I think that now, listening to what he's done, I could probably handle it and I think it would work wonders for my kids. So that's something.

Also, I'm debating about having my derby life intertwine with my school life. I want to get the rollergirls to do something with my school or just my sixth grade, but I realize that it would probably compromise my school's anonymity out in the internets and beyond. Not that I have many blog readers, and not that I'm a particularly popular rollergirl, but it would be out there for anyone and everyone and I would have to cope with that. It will probably be just fine, but still I'm sure that there would be consequences that even I can't imagine, good or bad.

In the effort to make my tests more LEAP-like, to better prepare my kids for the 6th grade iLEAP and beyond, I gave a mostly multiple choice test today. I am wary of grading it, as I don't know new levels of disappointment my kids can dredge up. On the other hand, my hope when I was writing the test was that it would actually make things easier on some level. Kids would have choices, an idea of what the answer might be. On the other hand, a lot of my kids see multiple choice and just start circling answers without paying much attention to what the answer means. Here goes nothing.

testing, testing

Have I mentioned that it is Exam Week at my particular school? Well, it is. I don't ever remember having an official Exam Week when I was in middle school, but that was over a decade ago so my brain cells have probably died since then and I've forgotten. Anyway, I've been giving a small bit of math test each day this week so as not to overwhelm the kids with 14 pages of comparing fractions, common denominators, multiples, factors, primes, composites, decimals, and general number overload. On the one hand, it's made my week pretty stress free and the kids like the fact that we spend the last twenty or thirty minutes of class playing Heads-Up 7-Up everyday. This will come back to haunt me when it's time to work again but for now it's doing wonders for my nerves. On the other hand, these exams are mostly disappointing. There have been a few pleasant surprises, there have been some expected disappointments, and there is a general mediocrity and complete lack of desire to learn. Let's not forget the outright refusal to read directions. This is where most of them fail: as soon as they have to read something and think about it. Even if they can read, they are loathe to do it most of the time. Reading? In math class? Is this woman crazy?

Apparently so. I gave my kids cryptograms as a fun post-test activity on Monday and they all immediately complained, without reading directions and even after 'reading' them, that it was too difficult and they couldn't do it. I thought kids LIKED codes. Well, it worked out eventually but it wasn't a fight I was expecting to take on.

a 'quiet' friday

How to keep the kids from driving you insane on Fridays?

TESTS!

I love the brief calm of a silent classroom. Oh, so brief.