ISTEP

Today was, thankfully, the last day of ISTEP. I think that it's safe to say that it has been an exhausting week for everyone. I feel so bad for the kids in my class. They have worked so hard to prepare for this round of testing, and it broke my heart to watch their faces as they started the test. It was far beyond anything that we had practiced in class, and the stress was visible on most of their faces.
As a teacher, I was blown away. I had to read many of the Math questions again to make sure that I understood them and, were I to have solved them, I would have needed scratch paper. Each question required 4-5 steps and appeared to assess multiple standards, making it difficult to track which standards the student had mastered and which ones they were deficient in. And that was only Monday!
Tuesday, Wednesday, and today's tests assessed English/Language Arts skills. Each test had a lot of reading and writing, amounting to over an hour a day. By the end of today's testing period, I was totally burnt out. I think that to say my students felt the same, would be the understatement of the century...
It was unlike any test I had ever seen before, and I am so thankful that it is behind us.