What have I learned? That when you which the age of 15 all prior knowledge disappears. I have no idea where it goes, but it is no longer there. We are attempting, key word there, to teach our students the 13 ORIGINAL colonies. This is something that students should have learned back in um elementary school. Now we do not expect every student to name all of them the moment they walk in the door, nor do we expect the students to be able to locate them on a map. Do we expect you to know they are on the East coast? Yes. Do we expect you to know where Ga is? Um yea! You live there! The rest, we plan to teach.
So teaching we did. Then we had this conversation.
Teacher: What religious experience spread across the 13 colonies that made them more alike?
Student: A tornado!!
Crickets....
Since when did a tornado become a religious experience? Also I should not that this was a question that had multiple choice answers?!? No tornado was not one of the choices. The answer is Great Awakening. Look you learned something today!
Sigh.
Then the test came around. Now we have seriously gone over the 13 ORIGINAL colonies EVERYDAY and labeled them on a map several times! We told them it would be on the test.
So as I am grading the map part of the test, I realize that apparently they thought we were lying about the map being on the test. Would you like to know the answers we got? Vermont was the most common answer for labeling New York. Thanks to Jersey Shore, New Jersey is now just Jersey, who needed the New? Manhattan has become a state. And Minnesota has apparently moved to the East coast. Did you know that? Bc I didn't. Of course kids could not label Ga and some labeled North and South Carolina as Tennessee and Alabama. By the way Florida move to Virginia.
Remember what Lindsey said about kids getting dumber and dumber? I COMPLETELY agree with her!
Yes there will be a map on every test. I am determined that by the time they leave this class they will at least know where Ga is located.
I just laughed so hard I cried. "Manhattan has become a state." Bahahahahaha
ReplyDeleteTo be honest, I probably couldn't do THAT well on those tests. I don't remember learning the colonies except for Thanksgiving week in Elementary school. I know where Ga and the surrounding states are atleast haha
ReplyDeleteHaha Kelly! Well they have studied this for three weeks straight and we made a map with them and played games. Lol.
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