Thursday, November 13, 2008

testing my smart cookie

i got to administer the practice state standardized test to my smart cookie (aka clementine) this week. although i hate being pulled from my case load to test, i was thrilled to get one-on-one time with msc.
her brilliant classroom teacher had suggested to her mother that she be able to sit on a work-out ball instead of a chair in class. (brilliant!! i wish we'd done that in 1st grade.) as we left the room her teacher reminded her to "carry it like furniture". my smart cookie looked at me with an evil twinkle eye and smirked, yeah, but i threw a chair once.

yeah, i know. i replied. i was there. it was my chair, remember?

oh yeah.
~~ ~~ ~~
i adore this little girl and really enjoyed getting to see her thinking on the standardized test. it gave me insight in general into how 3rd graders do on these kinds of tests. part of her fully believed the numbers were "speaking to her" and that she could guess the right answer by just staring at the answers hard enough.
on some questions she'd become so distracted by the names used in the examples, or even just the way the test makers laid out the page that she'd totally forget the purpose of what she was trying to do.
today on the reading test i couldn't stop smiling because she couldn't read the passages without giving her running commentary on them. this kid remembers so much about everything so every nonfiction passage lead to her informing me about the science behind it. i was fascinated about where she learned the information, but just kept nodding since i couldn't interact with her beyond the test instructions. and of course, out of nowhere she'd fill me on on details of her life.
"done with number two. so, mrs. lipstick. did i tell you my hamster passed away?"
"tell me when you're finished with your test, msc"
"ok"
middle of reading next passage
"so, did you know that if you cut your cat's tongue out it wouldn't be able to purr anymore?"
"can we talk about this-"
"oh yeah. later"
back to work.
"hey, did you hear that?"
hear what?
loud fart.

see why she gets small group testing?

i love this kid.

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