Any good ideas for what the kids should do when they finish their state tests? For some tests, we have 90 minutes or even 120 minutes. What do your students do when they are finished early?
I teach younger grades so our periods are only 50 minutes. Even so, some finish early. They do anything quiet. Read/write/draw, fuse beads, build card houses. We're only talking about 20 minutes, though.
read read read or sleep Our kids can not do anything but read for almost the whole day. There is no talking until the entire grade level is done. It's unbearble those days to make an entire room full of kids who are finished but there is still one person in the grade level not finished keep quiet. I hate testing days!!! Even when I wasn't in a grade level that took state tests it was unbearble to make kinder kids understand that they have to be quiet in the hallway.
My kids (high school) still love to color, do word finds, and dot to dots! I end TAKS week with a whole bulletin board covered with coloring book pages! They get very competitive. You can find some really complicated dot to dot and coloring pages online, but they like the simple ones more.
They can put their heads down, sleep, and be quiet. I do not allow coloring as that is disruptive to other students. Also some students would just race through so that they can color.
I am not allowed to have any "fun" alternatives to testing. It is felt that it will encourage them to finish quickly to get to the "fun". My kids put their heads down and wait. Our tests are shorter though (each subject broken into two parts).
At our school they can read or put their heads down. TAKS testing is pretty serious. Ours go all day long. Kids usually finish math before lunch, but for writing, some kids are still testing after dismissal. We allow no parent volunteers in the building on TAKS day and no visitors for lunch.
This is how it works at my school, too. We did our testing a couple weeks ago and my class tested from 8:30-3:00 for two days. It was the longest day of MY life and their's since I had to walk around constantly monitoring them. The rest of the class just sat there, waiting.
My students can doodle on their scratch paper, but nothing else is allowed. I encourage them to go back over their test and use the entire time allowed, but only a handful do.
I wish the group I have for testing could just read quietly--but of all my classes, it's the group with the worst readers and the most fidgeters, unfortunately. We have not received any directions like no fun activities, at least not yet, but it's true if some of them see the others drawing or doing puzzles, they'll want to rush through the test to do the same. It's just so painful to try to keep them still and quiet.
We're like Tennessee's testing. There are two 70-minute periods for the five subjects. The first day is reading, then language, then math, etc. They must have at least 45 minutes, and then up to 25 additional minutes (totalling the 70 minutes) They can't do anything after finishing the first session. Nothing except check their answers and doodle in the test book. After the second 45 minutes, they are allowed to read a book if they indicate that they are completely finished. I have to collect their booklets if they read just in case they inadvertently see something that would change an answer. All the kids finished withing the 70 minute time frames. I had some interesting doodles this year. Some wrote comments beside answer choices, such as "stupid answer" and "You just asked me that." One drew aliens and then made multiple choices underneath them that were pretty funny. Another drew the Battle of Gettysburg beside that question and labeled various places and people. Then wrote, "See! I told you I knew the answer." Lots of "Duh!" They are allowed to write in the test booklets, but of course the answer document has to be pristine.
I get to proctor freshmen taking the CA state tests Tuesday and Wednesday while my kids are at senior seminar and senior picnic...FUN! The hardest thing to do will be to enforce the no electronics rule. Students can read or doodle on scratch paper. I've got a big stack of magazines I've been collecting for future cut'n'paste projects, so they can look through those if they want. Maybe I'll copy some word finds and dot-to-dots and have those on hand too...I just want them to be quiet so I can get some grading done!
Last year, I had kids turn in their electronics for temporary babysitting. I let them know they would not get in trouble this particular week but it was unacceptable other times. They all turned in their electronics, I made sure they were off, and I put them in my locked filing cabinet. The kids were very compliant with my request.
Ditto. Our tests are about 50 minutes each. It's OK for 2nd graders to have to learn to wait in silence.
I was under the impression that the state of Texas does not allow any activities other than reading once a student finishes the test. In our district, students may read or sleep. That's it. In our building, we set aside 3 1/2 hours for reading, writing and math TAKS, and 2 1/2 hours for science and social studies TAKS. It's a beating to try and keep 30 8th graders still and quiet once the majority of them have finished. Inevitably, I have one or two who take the entire time, then get moved to the library to finish at the end of our allotted time. (The state allows students as much time as they need for each test.)
