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| P2 working on their math end of term exam. |
My time at Rwentutu Christian Community School ended with the end of the term exams.
As a teacher I was very nervous.
Even though I followed the curriculum I was supposed to I was nervous
that things we hadn’t covered would be on the exams and or the extreme amount
of information that my students wouldn’t be able to recall the large amount of
information they were expected to memorize but not necessarily understand. Any way I was nervous.
The exams didn’t follow our curriculum as closely as I
thought they would. Our English
exam was fairly different than the curriculum work we had been doing in
class. I don’t know if this is
because we are using an out dated textbook that I no longer matched up with the
current scope and sequence of the National Ugandan curriculum, I am not
sure. I feel strongly that
the English exam did nothing to really measure my students ability to use and
understand English. The exam was
filled with sequencing and fill in the blank questions in which the directions
barely made sense.
Both the math and English exams were riddled with typos in
directions and questions that made it difficult for anyone, let alone a ELL P2
student to figure out what they wanted them to do. I am seriously considering contacting PRIME to see if they
would offer me a job from the U.S. to proof read some of these exams before
they are distributed to EVERY school in Uganda. When your English exam has grammatical errors in it and
typos in mathematical sequencing questions it’s a miracle that anyone can
answer in the “right” way.
In math the last few weeks of instruction I was debating
with myself, Pamela, other teachers and Jenna about how to spend my time. My students were far away from being
done with the Math curriculum they needed to cover between the end of term 2
exam. School was ending a week
early and our first week at school was interrupted due to a water shortage and
I was feeling the timing squeeze!
I was unsure whether I should keep going at a slower pace, really
focusing on understanding, not memorization vs. exposing all of my P2 students
to the rest of the content that could possibly be on the exam. I really struggled with what to do.
There are some students in my class who would be ready to move on quicker and
really benefit from quickly seeing and exploring the new topics where as the
majority of my students would benefit from spending more time working on
understanding our current topics well.
In the end I decided to cut out a few topics that were review from
earlier units and squeezed in an extra unit. On the math exam the topic that I debated spending all of
the rest of our time on was a major focus on the exam, the only topic that I
taught that was actually on the exam.
Looking back I wish I would have just stayed working at the pace that
promoted understanding instead of memorization. Although this choice wasn’t entirely my own I do think I let
the pressure of the exam over weight my knowledge of my students and how they
learn best.
After my students took the exams I got to mark (grade) all
of the exams. For both English and
math each question was worth 2 points and could be marked either right or
wrong, no in-between. I graded the
exams very strictly, only allowing 100% correct right answers to pass as
correct. In a staff meeting during
midterms King James stressed the importance of marking accurately because it
gives the student an accurate gauge of how they are doing with the
content. While I was marking I was
horrified at both the mistakes my students were making on the test as well as
their percentages. My
students struggled with the directions and thus lost a lot of points because
they didn’t understand what they were supposed to be doing. This was very frustrating because I
know that they would or could be capable if they understood what they were
supposed to be doing. The lowest exam that I marked was 20% in English and the
majority of the exams were between 40% – 70%. While I was marking I felt like I had failed my. Once I was back at school working with
Pamela to fill out the end of the year reports I was surprised and happy to
find out that almost all of my students improved on their end of term exam
grades when compared to their mid term exam marks.
After giving my students the end of term exams and marking
them I wish I would have spent more time with them working on test taking
skills. My students need to
practice reading directions and making sense of them as well as taking time to
proof read their exams when they are finished.
It has been a strange experience teaching for the test. During my entire time teaching here
I’ve known that in the end my abilities or inabilities will be shown on the
exam so I tired very hard to follow the national curriculum to a T and yet I
feel as though I didn’t accurately prepare them for the exams. I don’t yet know if that makes me feel
like if I were to do it again if I would sick even closer to the National
Curriculum or if I would now feel more comfortable straying a little when it
was in my students best interest because the test was somewhat
unpredictable. This is something I
am not yet sure of.
Rwentutu is working toward developing critical thinking in
with their students but it is difficult because there is no space for it in the
National exams and curriculum.
These independent thought and problem solving skills will be the most
useful tools for our students as they move past primary school. I celebrated this in my classroom by
creating portfolios for all of my students’ creative writing work. On our last day together I gave my
students portfolios of all their writing work arranged by date so they could
share their stories with their families and so they could see their development
as writers and problem solvers.
