My Blog List

Search This Blog

Wednesday, January 27, 2010

So, tell me again, why do we have Standards Tests?

I learned again today that our government actually analyzes the data from 3rd grade Standards testing in order to figure out how many future prisons to build in the future. Imagine that! Look at children, 8 years old, and condemn them before they have had a chance to bloom. To me, this sounds so immoral. But then it reminds me that our children don't play, they fill out worksheets. Units of Study are short. The short time gives children very little time to investigate and discover truths behind stories and events.

On to the news of the day in the special education classroom, today we continued our Sentence study. Some of the boys are learning step by step how to put words together to form a sentence. I am using the Montessori idea which uses a black triangle to represent nouns and a red circle to represent verbs, etc. We went through the act of cutting out the shapes, and laying them on the sentence strip. Then we added appropriate words to make a two word sentence. One of my first graders is very much in tune with what we are doing. What is really good is that abcteach.com has begun to have Montessori Materials accessible on the site.

The boys worked on the old program of Paint today. Their Internet has been removed. Then they wrote on the whiteboard with real markers. This afternoon, I began to film the Toy Theater productions. Keep them busy all day, that is the key.

That's all for now, as Pres. Obama is about to speak.

No comments: