Senior Exam Week

And so we send our seniors off the week before preliminary examinations with the best wishes and the highest hopes that they will put in the work necessary to do well.  I always try to refer to these mid-term school exams as preliminary - we usually have 20 students or so who need to access these results as derived grades for NCEA.  It's a fine line between encouraging students to take these as seriously as NCEA for that reason, and not freaking them out about a three hour assessment held two months before their learning journey ends! This year I've pushed for all students at Year 11 and 12 to try everything, see how they go and assess it from there.  

In addition, our school prizes are decided on the back of these examinations.  If students only sit two of three papers, they pretty much eliminate themselves from the running at Prizegiving.  Such pressure.

I really encouraged my students to write practice essays and email them to me over the weekend.  As is the same most years, I received four essays from classes that total 70 students.  I guess you can only offer your services at this time - they have to take you up on your offer. I live in hope that I will receive more closer to NCEA. In the weeks leading up to these exams, we do lots of practice 'testing' - forced time constraints in class - to make sure that they are at least writing some essays in the lead up.

I have become more and more enthused about Unfamiliar Texts as the years progress.  I've done some concentrated teaching around this standard this year, and my Masters student teacher also did some great work with my Year 11 class.  I'm marking 127 (all Year 11!) Unfamiliar Text papers after the exam on Wednesday morning - wish me luck!  As you English teachers out there know, that's actually 388 answers, with three unfamiliar texts in each student's paper. Woohoo! I'll be a marking expert by the end of the week. I'm looking forward to seeing if some of my teaching adjustments pay off for my students.  The inquiry cycle in action!

Last year I marked most Year 11 Unfamiliar Text papers, and found it to be amazing professional development as far as my teaching was concerned.  By the 80th paper, I sure knew what I was looking for, and plans were swirling around in my head around the teaching I could do around what I'd learned.  I'm really looking forward to similar enlightenments this year.

Good luck, all students out there!  Show us what you know!