A friend and I took a road trip Thursday evening to the great state of Pennsylvania. We were there through Saturday evening to attend the Christian Homeschool Association of Pennsylvania's (CHAP) annual convention. It was a wonderful, if a bit overwhelming and exhausting, experience. I hope to write a post soon highlighting some things I learned and all the curricula I purchased.
The most interesting development at the lab last week was TS 1's standardized testing.
Our state requires an end of the year evaluation and for TS 1 I chose to administer a standardized test to fulfill this requirement. I decided on the Personalized Achievement Summary System (PASS) test because I wanted something I could administer at home. One of my goals is to finish up our school year by mid June and taking three days off for testing right now would have interfered with that. The PASS also only tests Reading, Language and Math, the three subjects from which I am interested in getting an objective assessment. TS 1 completed the Reading and Language sections of the test last week. He is working on the Math portion as I write. The first two sections took him just about an hour to complete, making it possible for him to complete most of his regular school work and still finish up close to our regular time each day. The math section seems a bit longer, so I minimized the rest of his school work for today, as he has writing class this afternoon.
In case you are curious, the PASS has been extremely easy to administer. Since it is TS 1's first year with the test, he first took a pretest for each section to determine the level of the actual test he would take. Next year, the level will be predetermined based on his results from this year's testing. After we complete the three sections, I send all the materials back to Hewitt for scoring. Results will be sent to me 2-4 weeks after that, just in time to submit them to our school district with my final Quarterly Report.
As the end of the year report for TS 2, I will submit a written narrative of his work and progress this year. Since he is only in second grade, he could not take the PASS this year as it begins in third grade. Next year, I will probably opt to administer the PASS to him as well.
On Tuesday night, I hosted the monthly Mother's Meeting for our local homeschool group. The meeting topic was Teaching Science, which was ironic since Tom teaches Science to our test subjects. It did not much matter though since my role was simply to provide a location, some snacks and talk a bit about how our homeschool day typically looks. I enjoyed hosting and hoped the ladies left feeling refreshed and encouraged.
Since I was gone all day Friday, my parents were here supervising the boys. They told me that the boys were very independent and got all of their assigned work done. I'm very proud of how independent and industrious they can be. It doesn't have every day, believe me. Remember our late winter-early spring blues? But when it does, I am thankful.
Hope to post here again Friday with a Weekly Wrap Up! Before you go, be sure to go and read our exciting news about next year :)
Our state requires an end of the year evaluation and for TS 1 I chose to administer a standardized test to fulfill this requirement. I decided on the Personalized Achievement Summary System (PASS) test because I wanted something I could administer at home. One of my goals is to finish up our school year by mid June and taking three days off for testing right now would have interfered with that. The PASS also only tests Reading, Language and Math, the three subjects from which I am interested in getting an objective assessment. TS 1 completed the Reading and Language sections of the test last week. He is working on the Math portion as I write. The first two sections took him just about an hour to complete, making it possible for him to complete most of his regular school work and still finish up close to our regular time each day. The math section seems a bit longer, so I minimized the rest of his school work for today, as he has writing class this afternoon.
In case you are curious, the PASS has been extremely easy to administer. Since it is TS 1's first year with the test, he first took a pretest for each section to determine the level of the actual test he would take. Next year, the level will be predetermined based on his results from this year's testing. After we complete the three sections, I send all the materials back to Hewitt for scoring. Results will be sent to me 2-4 weeks after that, just in time to submit them to our school district with my final Quarterly Report.
As the end of the year report for TS 2, I will submit a written narrative of his work and progress this year. Since he is only in second grade, he could not take the PASS this year as it begins in third grade. Next year, I will probably opt to administer the PASS to him as well.
On Tuesday night, I hosted the monthly Mother's Meeting for our local homeschool group. The meeting topic was Teaching Science, which was ironic since Tom teaches Science to our test subjects. It did not much matter though since my role was simply to provide a location, some snacks and talk a bit about how our homeschool day typically looks. I enjoyed hosting and hoped the ladies left feeling refreshed and encouraged.
Since I was gone all day Friday, my parents were here supervising the boys. They told me that the boys were very independent and got all of their assigned work done. I'm very proud of how independent and industrious they can be. It doesn't have every day, believe me. Remember our late winter-early spring blues? But when it does, I am thankful.
Hope to post here again Friday with a Weekly Wrap Up! Before you go, be sure to go and read our exciting news about next year :)
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