Day #2 of Exam Week for Term 1

My dh had to get up an hour earlier for work so I slept in until 7:50 am. Yep, that’s how that works. Wake me at the right time or don’t expect me to be up until…well, when I wake up. Or something like that.

It’s two hours later now –I’ve had a couple cups of coffee and the kids have had their breakfast of honey nut o’s. Fox has done work on a few of his questions. Lee however is stalling this morning for some reason. She woke up before Fox and I thought she would get going sooner. Is it Thursday? Because that is her usual ‘slack’ day. Nope, it’s Tuesday. Although, if today is #2 of a 3-day week, then it would be a ‘Thursday’. Huh, imagine that!

Anyway. That is where we are at the moment. More to come later.

Finally both have worked on their exams. I’m going to be honest here- but I’ll try to keep it nice. I’m extremely frustrated with the lack of independence (?) in both of my kids. When I wrote the questions for the exam- barring the math- I wrote them with the purpose of wanting them to tell me what’s in their head. They both seem to think there is something particular, some exact detail or scene, that I am looking for and if they can’t figure it out, they panic. And based on just the few math problems for at least one kid, we are going to have to go b.a.c.k. in math. None of the processes or formulas could be recalled- I did try to give hints and a little help (is that bad?) but in the end I’m thinking that is just adding to the dependence.

And one more thing- the lack of details –not from the accounts they are relaying but the details in the sentences themselves –is driving me absolutely batty! I have an 8th and 10th grader but get an answer that someone could guess a 4th grader (or lower) wrote. The sentence(s) are such as: If you looked in it you would die. If you looked in what? Why? What are the surrounding circumstances? Of course I do know that written ‘narrations’ are harder than oral narrations- these exams are primarily written narrations. I need to look at the answers as areas where we need to work on not so much as failings. It’s not as easy to grade as a multiple choice test that’s for sure!

I would love to blame this on the public schools but I don’t think that’d really be accurate. Awhile ago, reading Charlotte Mason’s volume 3, about Masterly Inactivity, she talks about the parent who fairly over-explains things. I have a tendency to do that. A lot actually. I think I’ve gotten better over the last year but the ‘damage’ may well have been done!

Anyway, it is 12:30 pm now and Lee is working on her chores. Fox finished his exam portion for the day, choosing to take turns doing chores and answering questions like yesterday.

I was on the AO forums earlier and the question of grading the exams came up. There is talk of creating a rubric specific to the exams. I’m excited to hear that. I’ve really never been good with rubrics, though.