Testing 1-2-3

IT'S A WRAP: This morning Annabelle gave Kirby a bath. Afterward, because Kirby was shivering so pathetically, she wrapped the dog in a fleece blanket. Annabelle had her arms wrapped around Kirby and was cooing to her, "My burrito. My burrito," or so I thought. I asked her if she was calling Kirby a burrito because she was wrapped up.

Annabelle looked at me like I was slightly mad and said, "Um, I was saying 'my perrito.' Perrito means 'little dog' in Spanish."

Oh.

TAKE YOUR PLACES: During the course of my recent research into various curriculum available to home schoolers, I came across the Web site for the Calvert School. While I am not going to be buying their curriculum, I was happy to avail myself to their free assessments designed to help parents determine which K-3 grade level curriculum is appropriate for their children. I want to know if we're on the mark - or way, way off. I chose their third grade level test for language arts.

This morning I administered (oh, so official sounding!) the test to the kids. To this adjudicator's eyes, they both passed with little trouble. Although, I will admit, that CJ might run into some trouble with other standardized test scorers. He just thinks of things in, well, non-standard ways. For instance, in one part of the test the kids had to read a several-paragraph- long story about a group of kids walking through a snowy park. Then they had to answer multiple choice comprehension questions about it. No problem there. A couple of pages later, there was a part of the test with a picture of a little kid rolling a snowball in a snowy field. They were to write four sentences about it. Annabelle wrote, "The boy is makeing a snow ball. He is going to probly make a snowman. I wonder what those ice blocks are for. Maybe an igloo?"

However, although it was (for the test's purposes) a completely independent "problem," CJ thought he had to tie the picture into the story he'd read a couple of pages ago and so he worked hard to write about what he'd read. "They like to play with snow. I like snow too. They found foot prints. They made foot prints." I asked CJ what his story's title would be and he said, "The Return of the Snow Kids."

The test we did today made me recall a meeting with his kindergarten "team" and them sharing some test results to us and on one section they were telling us that CJ was "wrong" or having a hard time with the test because he was trying to make connections that weren't there. I remember Christian and I thinking (and saying), "Hmm. Well in a way, shouldn't he get EXTRA credit for trying to make connections instead of being docked for it?"


But I guess god FORBID someone thinks outside the standardized test box.

SOMETHING'S FISHY: Tomorrow we'll head down to Fisherman's Terminal at the foot of our hill to the annual Fishermen's Fall Festival. There, the kids will be able to catch a live trout, build a wooden boat, bounce around in an inflatable and more.

In preparation of the celebration, I showed the kids a cool music video, "Salmon Dance" by the Chemical Brothers. Entertaining and educational, "I really liked the hip hop fish," said Annabelle.
I also found a wonderful educational activity book for the kids on the Salmon Homecoming Alliance Web site. (SHA is a Seattle based non profit spawned by the Salmon Homecoming Celebration and Salmon Resource Forum. There is an annual event hosted by the Seattle Aquarium and the Northwest Indian Fisheries Commission.) The booklet (a downloadable PDF) included a board game - The Great Salmon Life Cycle Race. At the starting line the kids were salmon eggs and as they progressed along the salmon shaped playfield, they grew and encountered all sorts of obstacles that keep the vast majority of salmon from returning to their birthplaces to spawn.

The booklet also had a page explaining what salmon mean to Native Americans, and a couple of pages describing what a watershed is and how it works. After reading that, we took a quiz about watersheds, which the kids took. They also completed a cool word scramble about Native American guardian spirits. It had cool masks next to the scrambled words (such as bear, goat, raven and eagle).

When we were talking about the salmon's predators, I just HAD to show the kids the classic commercial for canned salmon from John West. I've probably seen the clip a hundred times, but I still laugh every time.




BY THE NUMBERS: With the language arts out of the way, we turned our assessment attention to math. For that, we turned to the folks at Singapore.

Why Singapore math? Well, one thing it has going for it is that it's NOT the math Seattle Public Schools is using district wide with rather abysmal results. However, it IS the math that's used in ONE school in the entire district. And that ONE school repeatedly outperforms the others in math achievement. (Check out this enlightening article by Bruce Ramsey about the Singapore success at Schmitz Park.)

Singapore Math has a whole slew of placement tests on their Web site so you can make sure you get the right textbook and workbook for the grade level for your student(s). your student is at (yes, I know, bad grammar).

For the kids, I used the post first grade/entry to second grade test (PDF here). It was a good exercise for ME because while it's obvious that the kids can do all the computations that were required, once in awhile (during story problems) they had a hard time figuring out what exactly was being asked of them. Lesson learned: we need to do more story problems.

SOUNDTRACK: We listened to quite a bit of music this afternoon as the kids were working on their math assessments. First up was Martin Leung, pianist extraordinaire playing music from Super Mario Bros. Of course all of us were distracted to the point of not being able to do math ...



After that, I switched to classic classical music, including Beethoven's "Moonlight Sonata", "Ode to Joy" and "Fur Elise"; Mozart's "Air on G String," and Vivaldi's Fall requiem.

SNEAK PEEK: Late this afternoon we went out for some exercise. CJ and Annabelle set a quick pace over to Lawton. Once there, we got a good look at the latest activity at the new city park adjacent to Lawton Elementary. Lookin' good! It has a forest theme, with faux boulders and stumps. It has a lovely view of Greenwood, Phinney Ridge and the canal in Ballard. We can't wait until it opens!