Today I got my 8th graders back on track after yesterday’s Infrastructure Test by getting us back into a workbook exercise that is practice for the district writing test, which is practice for the Florida Standards Assessment coming up March 2nd. They had to practice writing a body paragraph for their essay.
The formula for such a paragraph is:
My key idea for this paragraph is ______________. In the article/essay/text “_____” the author says, “___________________.” This supports my key idea because ____________________. In the article/essay/text “_____” the author says, “___________________.” This supports my key idea because ____________________. In the article/essay/text “_____” the author says, “___________________.” This supports my key idea because ____________________. This key idea can transition gracefully into my next text-supported idea.
The rest of my classes, four 6th grade and one 7th grade, started a district assessment full of paragraphs like that one, about topics of moderate to low interest. The 6th grade assessment asked them to read two newspaper articles that gave them very little to work with given the prompt. The seventh grade prompt gave them more to work with, I think. I’m still writing it for myself to find out.
These assessments will stretch through tomorrow into Monday, and for the 8th graders into Tuesday. I also spent time finalizing Remediation lists for our upcoming remediation on Monday and Tuesday. This will take me out of class for most of Monday and Tuesday, which isn’t really a big deal. My students will be taking a district assessment, so I wouldn’t be teaching anyway.
So today was all about testing, except for drama club after school where they brainstormed ideas for original 10 minute one-act plays to write, and our Super Hero Literacy Night, where I ran an event called The Suspect-Super Villain Edition.
That’s what I should be doing. Cool stuff.