Exam Day

Well today I gave an exam in each of my classes.  I made the exams based on the unit that we've just finished and after almost a week of reviewing exactly what was going to be on the exams I expect that most students will do well.  Of course, I've started grading my P4's and I'm starting to think that I didn't go over it as well as I thought.  Some of the easiest parts are proving problematic for the whole class which worries me.  Of course, I am starting with the kids who finished last, so I'm hoping that things will start to look up as I get to the kids who finished first.  My P3s and P5s finished overall much faster than the P4s and a cursory glance is giving me hope that I only made the P4 test too hard.  I'm not allowed to fail anybody, so the grades will all be adjusted accordingly, so at least there's no worries on that front.

I do want to share a few fun things the kids have written so far (I'm not making fun of them, I just think its creative/cute).  For example, they had to write out the number 911 (nine hundred eleven) but some of them have not grasped the numbers 10-20 because I'm getting a lot of either nine hundred one one or, my favorite, nine hundred onety-one.  Like I said, creative.  Oh, and I know they aren't grasping 10-20 because they don't have a problem with 645 or 558 but they can't get 416, 119, or 911 and its only the sixteen, nineteen, and eleven that's tripping them up.  So that's something I'll have to go over.

One other interesting thing about giving out the tests was the helping that happened (or tried to happen - I was wary of it from the beginning, so you better believe I pounced on that) towards the end of my P4 and P3 classes.  So as background, in case I haven't mentioned this before, when I give out assignments the kids pretty much work together to figure out the answers.  Sometimes this means they are actually collaborating, but more often it means that the smart kids are figuring it out and the other kids are copying.  This is, as it turns out, totally cultural.  Its not perceived as cheating, its just helping each other out.  Since I can't fail any of them this usually means I'm trying to come up with different strategies to make sure everyone is getting something out of the lesson even if they are copying down the sentences from one another.  However, I draw the line with exams and based on their behavior during the test the kids understood that helping each other during exams is not OK.  However, towards the end of my P4 and P3 classes I still had some kids working when class was over.  So I dismissed the students who were done with their tests and as they were leaving, some of them would stop by their friend's desk and start giving them the answers that they hadn't figured out yet.  I put a stop to it, but it did make me think about how that would rarely if ever happen in the U.S.  My memories of people cheating were people sneakily trying to look off someone else's paper - not freely giving away answers to a test!  Part of it stems from the fact that the U.S. just has a generally more competitive attitude towards school.  There are no standardized tests here that the kids have to take every year and I think that makes a huge difference between my job as a teacher here and teachers in the U.S.  Also, tests in general just aren't as big of a deal.  Last week I was reminding them every day that they had a test today and each day they were relaxed and acting like today would be any other day.  They get more anxious about me giving them a star for completeness on classwork (which I'm not grading - just giving them a star to work towards finishing) than they did about this test.  I think part of it must be that they know they're going to pass but its something for me to get used to just the same.  Just some interesting observations about the differences between the attitude towards tests in the U.S. and in Thailand.  

Other than that the day has been uneventful.  I did get to have a chat with my sister and her roommates and her boyfriend which was really good.  They reminded me that I took some pictures of the school, but haven't posted them yet.  So here are some pictures of the school - I don't think I actually remembered to take pictures of my classroom so you'll just have to wait for those.  But know that my classroom does look different from the other classrooms.

These are the kids lined up for assembly - some of my kids are actually in this picture, in the darker blue shirts on the left side. 

Here is a Thai classroom - they all have the same backpack provided by the school.  The desks in my classroom are the same but I have a white board, technology, and my room is closed off because of the air conditioning.  This room stays open like this and when you walk down the hall, all of the doors are open.

This is a staircase with some books at the bottom.  I took a picture of it because its different from the staircase I use and I thought it was prettier going up in a circle and being so clean and bright.  

I think that's about it for today - I'm having trouble thinking of other things to write right now.  Its OK though since you got such an epic post yesterday, right?  ;) (also, I just saw this and realized how weird that "wink" looks in this font.  I apologize.  It is supposed to be a *wink*)