Day 4

Wednesday is a short day, the kids go home at 1:30 but we have to stay until 3. I pleaded sickness (cough, cough) and left early. We have 2 full weeks of testing the little children: Math which is writing numbers to 20, making patterns, simple addition, days of the week, and shape recognition. For Language Arts we ahve to test them on letters names, letter sounds, reading high frequency words (25), reading (level 2), writing at least a sentence, and penmanship. I am lucky I have only 15 kids because every test has to be done one by one. The challenge is giving the other 14 kids something to do so they don't interrupt constantly! It all takes a loooong time and we all (teachers and kids) get frustrated and cranky.

There's way too much emphasis on testing, most especially in Kindergarten, I just don't think they should be given so many tests. I have 3 children that are still 4 years old (one of them is turning 5 tomorrow), let them be children I say :)