CELDT

Today some of our students took the California English Language Development Test, known by teachers without any affection as “the CELDT.” It’s one of those things which sounded like a good idea when somebody proposed it in Sacramento, but it does not give teachers much useful information and I doubt it really helps the district much, either. Still, as a teacher, you often just need to do what you’re told to do….

It took most of the morning. The other students were given some grammar work on main and helping verbs and made an artsy flow map from one of the stories we have read so far in Open Court. I worked individually with students to administer the speaking and listening sections of the test. I bribed the class with the promise of no homework if they could be quiet so we could get it all finished. They came through, and today is a day without any homework. Just don’t get used to it….

We did a couple other things. The most fun of these was a little more work with our isopods and beetles. We constructed little cabanas over one end of the runways to see if the creatures had a preference for light or dark environments. I talked a little about isolating factors in a scientific experiment – we’ll come back to that theme a lot in this year.

We also took a math test, but it’s not corrected yet. We’ll do that tomorrow and get the grades up soon after that.

Homework:  Enjoy the rare free day! And thanks to all the students for being so cooperative that the CELDT is finished and turned in. Yes!!!!