Successes in the Classroom

I'll be on the road the next few days because we have a five-day vacation for Chuseok so I wanted to post a little something before I left. This past week at work has been the busiest yet. Both my fifth and sixth graders had tests (300 tests to grade in all) and the new English Camp began. Therefore, I've been running around like crazy at school. The hardwork paid off though, my fifth and sixth graders did much better overall on the most recent tests! Also one of the things that really bothered me last test was that we offered a retest for students who didn't perform well but the students performed just as poorly or worse on the retest. The regular tests includes spelling, reading, writing and listening. Generally the kids who do poorly bomb the spelling and then do okay on the reading, writing and listening. Last chapter my co-teacher asked me to make the retest all spelling because that's what she's always done. She also commented though that the retest was kind of silly because all the kids do just as poorly. I then requested to make a different test, that didn't focus on spelling, but she said a spelling test would be best. I then saw what she meant when she said the retest was pointless. The highest grade I saw on the previous chapter's retest was a 2/8 and many students received a zero. After witnessing that I realized how horrible the retest must be for my student's self-esteem. Many of the students clearly tried because they either wrote the words phonetically in Korean or wrote any English words they knew but my teacher and I weren't giving them the means of being successful. It really frustrated me to see that my students wanted to show me that they do understand some English and I just wasn't providing them with a way to demonstrate their learning.

This time around I vowed I would make the retest different and after a more lengthy conversation with my co-teacher I was given permission to make the retest however I wanted. Since I care much more about seeing if my students understand the meanings of the words we are studying I focused the test more on vocabulary. I provided the students with sentences or pictures and they had to connect those sentences or pictures to the key vocabulary in the chapter. Many of my students were much more successful on this test. Three students even received perfect scores! Additionally, a few of the students told my co-teacher that they liked this retest a lot more. I was really pleased and discussed the results with my co-teacher. She agreed that she noticed a big difference in the attitudes of the students as they were leaving the retest and said their smiles were reason enough to keep the new retest format. I was really glad my co-teacher agreed that it was most important to boost the confidence of our under-achievers and then use that confidence to push them to challenge themselves more in English instead of just accepting defeat.

I also have a few photos to share:

My fifth graders

My 3rd and 4th graders making their favorite meals.