The Rookery

I'm typing this while I watch the fifth graders practicing for the reading MCAs.  I feel very grateful that I'm at a school in which test prep is put in what I consider its proper perspective.  We'll spend about an hour getting acclimated to the format of the reading test and then, next week, we'll take it.  In some districts, test prep takes up the month before the test.  In others, it's replaced the curriculum entirely.

Test prep for us begins by talking about the purpose of the MCAs.  The state needs a way to make sure that schools are teaching kids.  It's not O.K. for students to spend time in schools where learning isn't taking place.  Unfortunately, the state needs to find a very inexpensive way to make sure schools are teaching.  It's very cheap for them to run a multiple choice answer sheet through a computer, it would be very expensive for them to send a representative to watch all of the honors project presentations.  In fact, the open ended responses where kids were asked to write sentences to explain their thinking are gone from this year's test — they cost too much to score even though they provide valuable insights.  So we help the students understand the context for the test and why one should do one's best on it.  We also put it in perspective — it's an imperfect measure of a small part of what learning is at Prairie Creek.

Then we talk about some test taking strategies so that you can do your best work on tests:

1. Know the format of the test (this is why we do a practice)
2. Stay calm and have fun with it (GORP helps a lot, as does smiling and making little jokes to yourself as you work)
3. See the test as an interesting puzzle (engaging your mind helps you do your best work.  I once had to do a reading test in which we spent two hours reading about buttons — fascinating.)
4. Double check your answers by re-thinking and confirming (this goes beyond making sure you answered every question.)

These strategies work for every test — the MCA, ACT, SAT, GRE, LSAT.  In our world, this is one way that we are measured and it helps to feel comfortable in that situation.  The reading MCAs are a fair test — they're untimed and developmentally appropriate.  I'm reserving my judgement on the math MCAs this year because it is a new, completely redesigned version and, based on the sample questions, it does not seem to be a developmentally appropriate as the last version (testing abstract concepts rather than concrete problems).  But those might only be the sample problems.  

The important thing is that our kids feel comfortable displaying their knowledge in a variety of ways — even when that way is imperfect.  Now, back to watching the Herons bubbling in circles.