Off the Map

The kids will be bringing home a take-home test for Reading tonight. There are a few reasons I'm doing it this way. The first is that there was to be a test for Social Studies tomorrow (more on that in a minute...), and I was worried about giving two big tests in a row like that. If they don't have them done when they come in tomorrow, they will be allowed to do it using an open book, but not with any help. I told them that I highly suggested that they do it tonight.

Now, about the Social Studies test: I had called the kids back to the back of the room where they sat on the floor, and we reread/skimmed the chapter and pulled out the important information and I wrote it down in a composition notebook. During lunch, I dutifully made a copy of my notes for each student in the class, and brought them back and put them in the kids' mailboxes. Or at least I thought I did. This morning, I was preparing for the day when I found the perfect stack of two-sided copies of the Social Studies notes on overhead desk at the front of the room. Since these notes will make up the entirety of what is going to be on this test, and since I thought they had these notes two days ago, I'm actually going to move the test to next Tuesday instead. As hard-cased as I was about sticking to my "map" until the end of the school year, I have to go back on it and it's my own doggone fault. Luckily I've taught the kids to understand that flexibility will really work to their benefit.

Other than that, all we have for tomorrow is a Spelling test, and my Math class will have a quiz-test over two-step algebra equations. We've done this quite a bit and I'm pretty comfortable with the kids' ability to do this at this point, so I'm sure we'll see some pretty high scores on those.