•3:23 PM
February 27, 2011 3:23 p.m.
Well the weather around here has grown rapidly warm, so much so that I can’t even imagine the chills that seemed to constantly be part of my life up until a week or so ago. I feel like we have jumped from winter to late spring, all of a sudden.
Sweet Girl received her first test set back from Calvert School. It was her first taste of feedback from her new Calvert A.T.S. teacher for third grade. It was interesting, for when she sent her first test in to Calvert, she was so excited to “meet” her new teacher. I found this curious, to think that meeting the new teacher is still such a thrill even when it is through the mail, instead of in person. I remember well the anticipation of discovering a new teacher when I was in public school . Well, it turns out that her new Calvert 3rd grade teacher is a true veteran, having been an Advisory Teacher at Calvert for 32 years! How amazing is that!? I think what I was doing 32 years ago – let’s see, that was 1979, and I was in high school. This teacher has served three thousand Calvert students through the years; isn’t that amazing? I feel very fortunate that Sweet Girl has such a teacher, who has seen so many students’ work through the years and has such a good benchmark for evaluating Sweet Girl’s work.
So, her first set of tests was great. Sweet Girl got a 1 (Calvert’s equivalent to an A) in Reading, Composition, Spelling, Math, Mythology, and Geography. She got a 2 in Social Studies. And she got an “incomplete” in Science. Here is why that happened. The first 10 questions on the science test had these directions: “write the letter of each word next to its meaning”. Then there were several definitions given with blanks next to them, and another column with science terms such as “a. observe, b. conifer, c. inherited trait, d. metamorphosis” etc. Well, Sweet Girl, instead of writing “d” when she meant metamorphosis, wrote “m” instead (for she was thinking of the first letter in the word rather than the letter besides the word). This meant that all 10 questions were marked incorrectly. So the teacher wrote “Retest Required” for science, and did not put a grade to it. She wrote in her letter “I do not like to give a grade of four (4) on a first test, so I am giving you an incomplete…… send your retest with test 40”.
Anyway, I was thankful that this teacher’s extensive amount of experience gave her the wisdom to handle the situation this way, and it prevented Sweet Girl from experiencing the shock of seeing a 4 on the grade sheet. It also gave me a chance to explain to Sweet Girl about the way letters appear besides answers so that she doesn’t misinterpret this on a future test. It is unclear to me whether her teacher realized how the mistake had been made.
Some homeschool mothers are pretty much against this kind of testing in their homeschools. Whereas I can understand their point of view (I think) I am glad to have tests with our Calvert courses. Yes, they can be long, and we do spread it out over several days (in Chips’ case) due to its length, but it does give our children an opportunity to get used to testing and make these kinds of mistakes now, when the stakes are low, before these unforeseeable types of errors are made when they are older and the stakes are high.
Well the weather around here has grown rapidly warm, so much so that I can’t even imagine the chills that seemed to constantly be part of my life up until a week or so ago. I feel like we have jumped from winter to late spring, all of a sudden.
Sweet Girl received her first test set back from Calvert School. It was her first taste of feedback from her new Calvert A.T.S. teacher for third grade. It was interesting, for when she sent her first test in to Calvert, she was so excited to “meet” her new teacher. I found this curious, to think that meeting the new teacher is still such a thrill even when it is through the mail, instead of in person. I remember well the anticipation of discovering a new teacher when I was in public school . Well, it turns out that her new Calvert 3rd grade teacher is a true veteran, having been an Advisory Teacher at Calvert for 32 years! How amazing is that!? I think what I was doing 32 years ago – let’s see, that was 1979, and I was in high school. This teacher has served three thousand Calvert students through the years; isn’t that amazing? I feel very fortunate that Sweet Girl has such a teacher, who has seen so many students’ work through the years and has such a good benchmark for evaluating Sweet Girl’s work.
So, her first set of tests was great. Sweet Girl got a 1 (Calvert’s equivalent to an A) in Reading, Composition, Spelling, Math, Mythology, and Geography. She got a 2 in Social Studies. And she got an “incomplete” in Science. Here is why that happened. The first 10 questions on the science test had these directions: “write the letter of each word next to its meaning”. Then there were several definitions given with blanks next to them, and another column with science terms such as “a. observe, b. conifer, c. inherited trait, d. metamorphosis” etc. Well, Sweet Girl, instead of writing “d” when she meant metamorphosis, wrote “m” instead (for she was thinking of the first letter in the word rather than the letter besides the word). This meant that all 10 questions were marked incorrectly. So the teacher wrote “Retest Required” for science, and did not put a grade to it. She wrote in her letter “I do not like to give a grade of four (4) on a first test, so I am giving you an incomplete…… send your retest with test 40”.
Anyway, I was thankful that this teacher’s extensive amount of experience gave her the wisdom to handle the situation this way, and it prevented Sweet Girl from experiencing the shock of seeing a 4 on the grade sheet. It also gave me a chance to explain to Sweet Girl about the way letters appear besides answers so that she doesn’t misinterpret this on a future test. It is unclear to me whether her teacher realized how the mistake had been made.
Some homeschool mothers are pretty much against this kind of testing in their homeschools. Whereas I can understand their point of view (I think) I am glad to have tests with our Calvert courses. Yes, they can be long, and we do spread it out over several days (in Chips’ case) due to its length, but it does give our children an opportunity to get used to testing and make these kinds of mistakes now, when the stakes are low, before these unforeseeable types of errors are made when they are older and the stakes are high.
1 comments:
Thank you so much for writing about this. We're starting Calvert Pre K this year and it's great to hear about the process from a fellow mom and not just the school.