Eden's Wanderings and Wonderings

As we approach the end of another school year, testing, testing, and more testing seem to go into overdrive. We have been assessing students' learning. We are checking what skills they have mastered this school year. With all the testing that we do, you won't be able to guess that enrolling and attending Kindergarten is NOT mandatory in the state of California.

Kindergarteners and First Graders took the district writing assessments these past couple of days. Yesterday, one of the kindergarteners in the other classroom said that she was "too stressed" as the writing assessment was administered. As the test progressed and more directions were given the 6 year old child became more agitated. Eventually, she threw a "fit", or had a breakdown, and started throwing things including her test packet or materials.

I worry when a 5 or 6 year old display serious test anxiety this early in their educational journey. I wonder if we are asking too much from the children. Granting that she is the only one who had a break down and could not handle the testing pressures, it still bothered me that that happened.

Here is the test: the kindergarten students were asked to draw a picture according to a given prompt. After 10 minutes of drawing, they had to stop. The class then braistormed about their pictures. Words were listed on a chart paper. Then students were directed to write as many descriptive sentences that they can. They may use the words on the brainstorm list.

First grade tests were more involved, of course. I do not even want to go there....

Teachers were instructed not to provide any other assistance... no reminders about capitalizations, correct spelling, or punctuation marks. Students are only reminded to review their work and make sure every writing "mechanics" are done right.

I hope that we do not turn our students off to learning. I am a life-long learner and I love going to school. But as far as I can remember, I was not asked to write paragraphs when I was 6 years old. I did not know what a graphic organizer was...I did not know what a word web was... I do not think that I knew how to organize my thoughts to put together some coherent paragraph.

I wonder what other standards we will have next year. I wonder what we will expect of our students so we can say they have reached some benchmarks...

I hope that I am not a teacher who is expcting too little of my students but one who just wants some activities that are developmentally appropriate for their age....