Benchmarks

It's benchmark testing week for our district. Since benchmark scores are scrutinized even more than our state assessment because the data is readily available and making teachers feel bad about their scores is something Central Office seems to live for, it's a stressful week for teachers and students. I taught math twice today, during the sparse instructional time I had available, trying to cover the last 2 standards I hadn't yet taught (spent toooooo much time trying to get them proficient at multi-digit multiplication and finally gave up (for now) on teaching division by 2-digit divisors.) So today we took a picture walk through the plane geometry chapter and learned about common factors and multiples. My kids are mathed-out, but that's okay. They won't see anymore math until Friday. Tomorrow, I'll science them out and Thursday I'll social studies them to death.

All of this seems to be working: their reading benchmark scores were actually pretty good. I'm cautiously optimistic about this week. Stress "cautiously". I've been burned before!