Common Core Or Rather Common Sore (II) - Welcome back to my blog! - As promised I'm back this week with a few examples of the Common Core Standard test. These are certainly just practice questions for students to work out at home with the help of so- called CCSS Exam Flashcards -by the way, another clever strategy to bring in even more revenue. However, they should give a rather clear idea of what is to be expected on D- Day, so to speak. Out of that Practice Question Directory I just picked Grade 1 and Grade 12 concerning English Language Arts and Grade1 and 8 for Mathematics. The reason being, after grade 8 the following categories read Mathematics Algebra, Functions, Geometry, Number and Quantity and finally Statistics and Probability. The latter ones strongly remind me of a math university curriculum rather than the one used in schools. Anyway, as a certified English teacher for English as a second language, I dare claim to have the necessary competence to evaluate the English language ability standard. However, as far as my skills, knowledge and liking of maths, I'm not going to pretend that back then I was any better than just a big goose egg. For reasons of lack of space, I'm not intending to type out every single text example but instead just leave my personal comments here and there. I strongly advise to look up the link, http://www.testprepreview.com/common-core-test-prep.htm, should you be interested in the exact nature and content of those text examples. - Alright, a Grade 1 English Language Arts test is divided in four different text parts which are to be answered through 10 questions altogether. Part 1, let me call it A, is a short story piece called "My trip to the Beach". Three contextual questions check on the student's level of specific and detailed text understanding. Okay, part 2 or B, "The Play", describes another short piece of tale and is covered by questions 4 and 5. Part C looks to me like a factual piece on Cats. Paraphrasing plus questions 6- 8 follow. The final text example is also factual and deals with Guitars. Questions 9 and 10 consequently remain to be answered. I came to the conclusion that neither text on Cats or Guitars was fun to read and analyze. For Heaven's sake, what can the interests of a 5 or 6- year old possibly be? I can guarantee you this, it's anything but cats and guitars. No offense, but some of the questions I found not just incredibly dumb but utterly unnecessary because nothing of that seems to be every- day related, let alone cool or useful. My overall impression was indeed, WOW, are those little ones seriously expected to have developed reading comprehension skills like that by the end of grade 1 already? I would be stoked if that were true!
The matter of fact, though, is that most high school graduates have alarmingly poor reading and spelling skills. - A Grade 12 English Language Arts Common Core Standards test quite logically consists of more tasks to tackle, but you see, this is exactly where I encountered the first wave of confusion. From part or task 1 through 7, no problem whatsoever, but suddenly part 8 turns out to be a melt- up of tasks and questions 8- 10. Does that indicate that there are just eight tasks altogether? Both poorly structured and laid out, if you ask me. Never mind, are you buckled up and ready for take- off? Task 1 - Looking at the word CAMAIL, which of the following multiple dictionary explanations describes it best? I'll spare you all the given options. Seriously, how stupid, and most of all, how necessary is this for college, the work- force, life in general? Task 2 - Which of these choices best defines the underlined word STELE in the given text (which is of clearly highly stylistic and literary quality!)? Honestly, how relevant is it to confront a 17 year- old Highschool student with such an advanced level of language? What for? Task 3 - Fill in the one gap in the text and choose between four different word categories which turn out to be Verb/ Noun/ Adjective and Past Participle. Listen, if a 12th grader doesn't instantaneously get it right to put a VERB behind the preposition TO, I'll shoot myself. This a 1st grader should be asked! An absolute joke! Task 4 introduces a story outline in Direct Speech ("..."). All of a sudden, the poor students are confronted with specific technical literary terms such as hyperbole, paradox, etc which again are anything but useful unless, of course, someone wants to become a teacher one day. Task 5 - Fill in the one gap by choosing among four possible (rather rare) words. Once more, why have these poor students deal with another linguistically highly sophisticated text piece which is by no means correspondent to the every- day use of the English language? The word choice alone is absolutely ridiculous in my opinion! Task 6 - Find the right sentence which displays the correct use of the hyphen. HYPHEN? Really? Let me tell you something, nobody here or elsewhere cares about the correct use of this dated hyphen. How about teaching the students the correct use of the apostrophe so we - all the English- as- a- second- language- speakers, who by the way literally got traumatized by the apostrophe - no longer have to break into seizures over grammatically incorrect concoctions like youre/ its/ lots of CD's, etc. Anyway, this sort of task is not just laughable but also pointless and non- practical at its best. Task 7 - Figure out which of the four words is misspelled. Ready for this atrocious stupidity? - Conciliatory, Paroxism, Malevolent, and Pernicious. In case you're feeling somewhat overwhelmed now, you are most likely not alone here. My guess is that only the top 10% know what exactly to do with this level of words. Of course, it's paroxysm not paroxism, as if anyone truly gave a rat's butt! Again, nothing but completely useless information. Task 8 - Now it's time for Emily Dickinson's poem "Because I Could Not Stop For Death" to be dissected, analyzed, reviewed and hopefully forgotten again. Don't get me wrong, as an English teacher to- be or an English language expert, this may be a really nice job to do. I remember doing this one also among many other poems twenty- five years ago, but this just does not belong into schools and certainly not into the Common Core Standard tests. Questions 8- 10 are devoted to this final task. - Gee! - Next week, I would like to focus on the second pillar, Mathematics and get you somewhat familiar with the logics involved in regard to the steps suggested as to solve all kinds of examples from fairly easy to really tricky. In the meantime, try and keep your kids away from their so beloved cells, computers, video games, and TVs. Instead attempt and get them interested in reading stylistically good newspapers, high quality books and high- standard literature.
The matter of fact, though, is that most high school graduates have alarmingly poor reading and spelling skills. - A Grade 12 English Language Arts Common Core Standards test quite logically consists of more tasks to tackle, but you see, this is exactly where I encountered the first wave of confusion. From part or task 1 through 7, no problem whatsoever, but suddenly part 8 turns out to be a melt- up of tasks and questions 8- 10. Does that indicate that there are just eight tasks altogether? Both poorly structured and laid out, if you ask me. Never mind, are you buckled up and ready for take- off? Task 1 - Looking at the word CAMAIL, which of the following multiple dictionary explanations describes it best? I'll spare you all the given options. Seriously, how stupid, and most of all, how necessary is this for college, the work- force, life in general? Task 2 - Which of these choices best defines the underlined word STELE in the given text (which is of clearly highly stylistic and literary quality!)? Honestly, how relevant is it to confront a 17 year- old Highschool student with such an advanced level of language? What for? Task 3 - Fill in the one gap in the text and choose between four different word categories which turn out to be Verb/ Noun/ Adjective and Past Participle. Listen, if a 12th grader doesn't instantaneously get it right to put a VERB behind the preposition TO, I'll shoot myself. This a 1st grader should be asked! An absolute joke! Task 4 introduces a story outline in Direct Speech ("..."). All of a sudden, the poor students are confronted with specific technical literary terms such as hyperbole, paradox, etc which again are anything but useful unless, of course, someone wants to become a teacher one day. Task 5 - Fill in the one gap by choosing among four possible (rather rare) words. Once more, why have these poor students deal with another linguistically highly sophisticated text piece which is by no means correspondent to the every- day use of the English language? The word choice alone is absolutely ridiculous in my opinion! Task 6 - Find the right sentence which displays the correct use of the hyphen. HYPHEN? Really? Let me tell you something, nobody here or elsewhere cares about the correct use of this dated hyphen. How about teaching the students the correct use of the apostrophe so we - all the English- as- a- second- language- speakers, who by the way literally got traumatized by the apostrophe - no longer have to break into seizures over grammatically incorrect concoctions like youre/ its/ lots of CD's, etc. Anyway, this sort of task is not just laughable but also pointless and non- practical at its best. Task 7 - Figure out which of the four words is misspelled. Ready for this atrocious stupidity? - Conciliatory, Paroxism, Malevolent, and Pernicious. In case you're feeling somewhat overwhelmed now, you are most likely not alone here. My guess is that only the top 10% know what exactly to do with this level of words. Of course, it's paroxysm not paroxism, as if anyone truly gave a rat's butt! Again, nothing but completely useless information. Task 8 - Now it's time for Emily Dickinson's poem "Because I Could Not Stop For Death" to be dissected, analyzed, reviewed and hopefully forgotten again. Don't get me wrong, as an English teacher to- be or an English language expert, this may be a really nice job to do. I remember doing this one also among many other poems twenty- five years ago, but this just does not belong into schools and certainly not into the Common Core Standard tests. Questions 8- 10 are devoted to this final task. - Gee! - Next week, I would like to focus on the second pillar, Mathematics and get you somewhat familiar with the logics involved in regard to the steps suggested as to solve all kinds of examples from fairly easy to really tricky. In the meantime, try and keep your kids away from their so beloved cells, computers, video games, and TVs. Instead attempt and get them interested in reading stylistically good newspapers, high quality books and high- standard literature.
Comments
Post a Comment