preparing beyond the bubble test...

Adding manes and tails to wooden horses

This was my last day of class in the clear Spring School year, and I had my students first grade through 6th for last class and finishing projects. I also invited my upper middle and high school students into the wood shop to claim finished work and to take a photo of the class.

Now, I'll begin getting the school wood shop ready for classes with the Eureka Springs School of the Arts. Our  end of the school year "Celebration of the Child" will be held on Thursday, and I'll spend some time working on end of year progress reports over the coming weekend.

With common core testing moving to various computer platforms, schools are discovering that lack of keyboarding skills are a handicap to their students' performance. So in addition to usual test prep, they are having to do technological test prep, too, to make certain students don't stumble over the equipment and lose points to their lack of technological expertise. Perhaps teachers will begin to reminisce about the good old days when the bubble test was the norm.

In any case one can see a problem in that those who have had less access to computers in early childhood, will measure less accurately, and just as standardized test scores have always expressed a strong bias against students from poor families, we can expect much more of the same.

Today the first and second grade students completed their wooden toy horses.

Make, fix and create...