Thursday, October 11, 2018

You'd Think It Would Be Idiot-proof....

Our Integrated Math 1 students have to take a district benchmark test either this week or next, and I scheduled my school's students to take it this week.  It's given online in one of the zillion software packages that our district people think we teachers have time to learn but don't, and I had a district person out last week to show my department's IM1 teachers how to get to and administer the test.

I'd planned for today to be a dry run--the district types said that of course the kids would know their student ID numbers, would know how to log into Chromebooks, would know their district passwords, etc., but I knew better.  I scheduled "instruction" today--how to log in, how to take the test--with tomorrow being the actual test administration.  After they logged in they could take the practice test.

It took awhile, but eventually today I got all my students logged in and working.  Since it was just the practice test, I told them they could work together, show each other what they've figured out, etc.  Things started running smoothly, which gave me time to look at what I'd done setting up the test.

The kids weren't taking the practice test.  I mistakenly had them taking the actual benchmark test instead.

The best laid plans....

1 comment:

Mr. W said...

Nicely done :-)

I think we have all done something like that. The beauty is that a majority of the students won't realize it is the same test that they already saw.

Just this past week, I had a problem on their notes, that was on the homework. I went over it during the notes and about 1/5 of the students in my classes asked about it on the homework. I went over it again. Put it on the test didn't change any numbers either and still had people confused.

The problem was 2^3k = 2^5k
so you get 3k = 5k and they just got stuck. They all said the same thing, if you subtract then nothing is left. Don't be jealous.