Sunday, June 5, 2011

Angling Towards the Finish

We're 2.5 weeks out from the finish of the school year. There is quite a bit to accomplish in the coming weeks: 2 sets of assessments, pushed back this late because of state testing; a field trip; a grade level party; grades and comments! This week is going to be tough!

The first order of business is going to be scoring the CBAs. I have scored 11 of the 13 I've received, and plan to finish the other 2 shortly. I'll get the other 52 tomorrow, which means I'll need to budget my time wisely. The upside is that I need to administer the Spring Writing Assessment, which will take 2 days (why two days- I need to have all the kids participate, and I see them for an hour per day... so 2 days!). During those times I'll score CBAs, hopefully getting through all of them by Thursday (13 per day, although likely 5-6 on Monday and 15 per day the other three days).

After the CBA commenting and scoring comes the writing assessment grading. That will take place Friday and over the weekend. The major difficultly in that is the amount of time it takes to read and thoughtfully comment. Checking the writing against the rubric is fairly easy after you've gotten into a groove of 3 or 4. But writing comments is a bear, largely because commenting needs to be specific and useful to the writer. Good job and needs work are too vague to really make an impression. I'll admit that part of me is conflicted because the kids often look at the score and disregard the comments, but that is for an entirely different post.

The last thing I "need" to do is get back to reading kids books. Kid lit is fantastic, and was a huge focus for 3/4 of the year. But I'm more than a little tired. Reading kids books, while enjoyable, reminds me of what I need to do for my kids. That is great... but a little exhausting in June.

Two and a half weeks. Lots of to do. I definitely need to make time count.

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