Problem Solving

Yesterday was a frustrating day. My kids were giving no effort. It's like they have checked out and can't focus on school anymore at all. All week they excelled while at my teacher center, but could not give me the same results when working independently. This came to a head Friday when many of them bombed a quiz on a skill I expected them to do great with. And I mean like a 0% bomb.

"you can do better than this" I told them. "Please try this again."

And they did try again. And they did much better.

We, of course, had the "do it right the first time." "give your best effort." "If you got 100% the 2nd time, you could have done that the 1st time" talk.

And I was freaking out. We have a benchmark test in three short weeks. We have the MAP test in 7 weeks. Now is NOT the time for us to mentally check out.

And then I *hated* the thoughts in my head.

Since when do I worry that much about a standardized test? Since when am I okay with a skill and drill format?

Here's the thing .... I'm not.

I have kiddos that are low readers. Half of the students in my class have IEPs. These kids need connections. They need me to tie everything to the real world. To give them hands on activities. To make things stick. They desperately need things to be fun.

And I didn't give them that last week.

So, next week you won't find my kiddos doing worksheets. You will find us learning about sequencing. You will find us reviewing figurative language. But there won't be any skill and drill. Instead there will be story reading. And paper folding. And creating monsters based on similes and metaphors. Because that's fun. And that's memorable. And that's what we need.

Granted, at some point we will still have to rectify this idea of "I don't have to try the first time I do a quiz" ... because that really could be terrible when we get to our major testing. But having fun has been known to magically fix all kinds of problems before. So maybe, just maybe, when I give a skills quiz at the end of the week my kids will give their best effort the first time and our problem will be solved. :)