Here is one link called "How Not To Prepare a Student for Standardized Testing." Not that you'd ever want to do such a terrible thing in the first place.
Before the clip, a rant on standardized testing - I'm not against all standardized testing, just the cheap ones we use now. I have no problem with the NAEP testing. I just have a problem with the cheap, crappy test we currently use. Don't think they're cheap? Well, Hartz spends far more money testing kitty litter than the U.S. spends in testing our kids. Let us test the kids once or twice a year and move on. Let's not spend so much damned class time prepping the kids (and don't even try to tell me that this doesn't go on, especially in elementary and middle schools) to take the blasted test.
Here's why -
Of course this is all big business - for the freaking test companies! They produce the test booklets. Now they produce videos and booklets to help pass the tests too.
It's one thing to teach the kids the knowledge that is supposedly tested on the test. It's another thing to have to teach the kids why the test is important (isn't that ironic) and then how to decipher their score.
"I'm worried about you. Is there anything you can do to get your score back up?"
What a joke.
How about teaching me some freaking math that I can use in the real world to enrich my life and land a job and not pass some stupid test!
This is everything that is wrong with our education system right now.
Now, having said that. I like these tips on how to prepare kids for these types of tests.
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Here is an interesting infographic, a day in the life of a connected educator. This makes me look forward to next week's class on the flipped classroom. Sorry if it's small. I love infographs, but they have to figure out a way to share them more effectively. Click on the link to see the infograph in better detail.
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This author argues, rightfully so I think, that it all comes down to relationships. He asks a key questions: What have you learned about what works when it comes to educating kids.
Again, I'll use one word here: relationships.
These millennial students are different than any kids before. My generation, when we went to school we wanted it to just be school. Sure we socialized, but at 3:00 school was done. Then it was on to sports and then home and maybe, maybe, maybe some homework. But that homework was done in total isolation.
That isn't what this generation is about.
Don Tapscott sent out a survey to 4,000 millennials and asked them this:
When you are using the internet are you
A. Entertaining yourself
B. Educating yourself
C. Connecting with others
D. Being Engaged
And many responses came back simply "Yes." Or, all of the above.
For this millennial generation, their technology allows for a blurring of all those lines. That's the type of blurring that never happened with my generation.
So when I come home after school and look at my phone, I see two text messages from kids wanting help with a writing assignment or wondering what their score is.
Education is about knowledge and skill and teaching kids how to learn how to learn. But in order to do al that, it is my firm belief that you have to build relationships with these kids first. When you have that relationship established, it's far easier to get them to do all the 'school stuff.'
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Stuff like this just fascinates me. A quick rundown of the list
12. Cursive - why they bother teaching this is beyond me. No high school kids write in cursive. But teaching cursive is better than test prep I guess.
11. The Card Catalog - good riddance. I never figured that damn thing out anyway!
10. Pluto as a planet - I miss it.
9. Typing - kids innately pick this up because of all the technology around. I wish kids were raised bi or even tri-lingual too.
8. Old school gym class staples - I never figured out how scaling to the top of the gym via a rope would impact my life. Of course, I was a chunker and probably never even got up off the matt.
7. Paper based reference materials - these are already just about gone. The staple we always go to in College Comp, the 20 plus volumes of Novels for Students, is all on line now! Hello pdf's!
6. Food pyramid. I guess it's now a food circle? Who knew? With most of America overweight anyway, I'm not sure the pyramid did any of us any good anyway.
5. Diagramming sentences. Again, good riddance. Why do grammar worksheets? If you have a kid practice a formula to write a compound-complex sentence placing the independent adverb clause first and the dependent adjective clause second, what the hell are you wasting our time on? If this worked, I'd see flawless sentence structure in my junior and senior papers. I don't. Get them writing and teach grammar in context.
4. Evolution - When I saw this, I first thought, well everyone just is aware of how evolution and natural selection work now. I was wrong: more states are looking to teach alternative theories on this.
3. Math drills - I still thinks it's good to know how to divide and multiply in your head (though I struggle to do so). Strictly relying on a calculator is not a wise move.
2. Clapping erasers - I always hated this when I was a student.
1. Scales and Balances - who ever cared about this anyway?
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