Observations April 26

This week feature more MSP practice. I understand the weight behind this test, but I think it’s taking its toll on the students and teachers. Suffice to say, I will be relieved when testing is over. In the history class, we compared two youtube videos concerning the Hanford nuclear site. One was released by the government assuring the public that the cleanup efforts are making progress. The other video was released by an environmental group that states the site is impossible to cleanup. It took the class a long time to even realize the videos were persuasive and not expository. I wish to teach a lesson on conducting and identifying biased news. I read a recent article in which a government official is questioning the legitimacy and necessity of peer reviewed journals. This came from the GOP that recently faced criticism over a budget proposal from a non-peer reviewed journal. A grad student reviewed the proposal and found a grievous error in the spreadsheet that disproved the proposal. Everything is becoming politicized and the need for educated discerning citizens is greater than ever. On a lighter note, I’ve learned a great deal about the grading process. Grading has become easier as I now have a better understanding of what criteria students are graded on for daily work. I realize that this assessment is formative and is graded for completeness, capitalization, and punctuation. I also learned how to enter grades, create assignments, and take attendance on the school district’s program. I might sound crazy, but I enjoyed grading assignments. Perhaps I was just bored with all of this MSP testing. On Friday I watched students take a practice session of the actual test and I was not impressed with the program. My main criticism was the character limit on student responses. A section wanted students to provide textual evidence and it was impossible to properly do so without omitting words. Are we preparing kids to become proficient writers? It’s hard to make good writers when the schools are adopting the rules of twitter: 140 characters or less.