If there is school, there must be a test

Today I was a little late getting to school.  Traffic was awful.  So I missed what the directions were for the workshop groups.  Luckily I work with first graders and I could figure out what they were doing.

We had groups writing a story about the picture of them in their Halloween costume.  Another group was sorting words by beginning sounds, another one was doing a math paper.  The last group was writing words from the Dolch list and then writing sentences. 

When the groups finished, Ms. H  gave an evil grin.  She asked one of the mother volunteers to put up the testing screening boards and for me to put a test on each desk.

The children were going to do a state mandatory math test.  The nightmare began.  The children do not listen to directions.  They look over the boards to check their neighbour's work.  They drop pencils.  They are on the wrong page.  They try to work ahead of the directions.  This is normal for little ones.  First graders take a lot of hand holding.


Ready for the children to begin the test.

This is Ms. H’s copy of the math test.

The last page of the test. 

Later I read them a story.  The Gingerbread Baby by Jan Brett is wonderfully illustrated.  There are so many things on the page to look at.  The children love books by Brett.


It was a busy hard working day.  We all felt we accomplished a lot.  The children were tired and so were the adults.