I feel the need to help explain why the reading test for my
students today causes such a struggle in me.
This is only one example but I think it’s a good one. I teach kindergarten (most of you know this
I'm sure) and that means the majority of my students have never been to
school. They are only 5 years old for
usually the first half of the school year, some starting at 4 still and turning
5 within the first month or so. 5 YEARS
OLD!!! That’s it!!! Ok so today was our 85th day in
school. So after 85 days of school (for
their entire 5 years of life) we are giving them a 57 question test on reading
in the computer lab for the 2nd time this school year. Yes I said 2nd! We were so nice to welcome these sometimes 4
and 5 year old children to school the first few weeks of their school career
and tested them on the computer… 57 questions for reading and I'm sure its close
to that for math (I don’t remember right now).
So 85 days of school total, their entire lives, and we are going
to test them and tell them this is important and your parents, teacher, the
principal and future teachers are going to look at this number and know what
you learned in kindergarten. (BTW- I DON’T
TELL MY STUDENTS THIS!!! I tell them to
try their best and I already know how smart they are!) So no pressure! YEAH RIGHT!!??!! They do as they are told because really what
other choice do they have. They sit and
listen to the question and all the answers and try to pick the best answer and
move on.
After answering 9 questions this student (who is a very
bright student) is asked to fix the highlighted word in the sentence because it
is spelled incorrectly. So the
highlighted word was ‘frum’. I could
tell she was having a hard time. She
moved the ‘f’ to the first space and the ‘m’ to the last space. And she sat there…. She asked me and I told
her she has to take her best guess….. she struggled. I could see it in her face she didn’t
understand why ‘frum’ was wrong and she knew she had to change the
spelling. She couldn’t move on until she
had 4 letters up on the lines. She tried
asking another teacher who gave the same response. At this point some students are getting close
to finishing and she continues to sit staring at the computer screen and
playing with the mouse. She did not want
to get this wrong. She wanted to get the
highest score she possibly could. I know
she was telling herself she should be able to spell this but was really having
a hard time. Why? Why was she struggling so hard with ‘frum’. Why?
Because she’s 5, she has had 85 days of school and has been taught to
use her sounds to spell words she didn’t know!!
/F/ /R/ /U/ /M/ are the sounds!!!!!!!!
She could not wrap her head around why that was wrong. From is not a kindergarten word!! We have not used that word much if at
all!! She didn’t want to do bad on her
test….. after 20 minutes I finally went back over to her and said pick any two
letters and put them in there and move on…. It’s one question, it’s ok!!! And she started crying, which just about made
me start crying!! SHE IS 5 YEARS
OLD!!!! She should NOT be this stressed
out to the point of crying because a word that SHE WOULD spell 'frum', is spelled
wrong.
We paused her test… I told her to take a deep breath which
only made her cry more. Then I told her
to go out in the hall and get a drink of water……. She came back in and another
teacher sat with her and helped her just move on….. She calmed and at the end
of our 45 min time period (I think she stayed a few minutes later)…. She still
has 11 more questions to go.
I told my entire class that I was SUPER impressed with how
well they did (and I was!!!) and that I was beyond proud of them!! But I am still… 7 hours after this incident….
Troubled that this student was crying over that question…… Nothing that I do for my students should EVER
make them cry like that!! NEVER!
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