No excuses

I took a little hiatus...wonderful holidays, great memories made.

Now the work. Your kids will probably be going through some mid-year testing soon - if not before Christmas, right after.

My students don't see many worksheet/fill in the bubble things. So it is my job to prepare them for what is to come.

My philosophy is to teach them how to read - how to summarize, analyze characters, and infer - with REAL TEXT...and then teach them how that looks on tests.

It's much better that way. I can't tell you how many kids I have seen over the years laden with packet after packet of test prep. They get so drilled, they don't even enjoy reading anymore. It's all about performance.

And it is about performance, but they WILL perform BEAUTIFULLY if they understand how to naturally do the work of reading.

Teaching them how to read questions and figure out the type of question it is is easy, once they know how to produce the thinking on their own with wonderful books.

My two cents today. My kids took a benchmark.