Standardized testing time!

Okay, they're really over now. This week, all eleventh-grade students in my school (and the state for that matter) were taking the Pennsylvania System of School Assessment (PSSA) test. Basically, its a standardized test, sponsored by the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania to measure how well the school is teaching English and Mathematics. Tuesday, Wedensday, and today (Thursday), we took the test, which ate up the first two blocks of the day.

Each day, the procedure was pretty much the same: All juniors were called out of homeroom at around 8:25, and went down to the cafeteria for a school-issued "breakfast," which consisted of strawberry-flavored Pepperidge Farm Goldfish cookies, and a choice of orange, grape, or apple-flavored juice. The first day, I grabbed one pack of the Goldfish cookies, and an orange juice in a small, sealed cup. I opened the juice, and found it to be mostly frozen, as if it were sitting outside for the morning, or in a freezer for a while. I "drank" the juice, but wasn't hungry for the cookies, so I threw them in my pocket to eat at lunch.

Then I got to my assigned testing classroom, with about 30 other students. After the teacher read the test instructions verbatim, as required, I got to work on the math section. I could handle most of the questions, but then there were some more involved questions beyond the multiple choice section. The first day, there were three, the other two days, two questuions. You had to solve the problem by showing all your work, then explain what you did. The thing is that the two or three questions were really more, because all had multiple parts that built on the previous part of the question.

Then about half way the 160-minute period, we wrapped up the math section, and started the reading section. The same format followed with the teacher reading off the instructions. This week was actually the reading section, not the grammar part, which took place last month. Tuesday, there were three passages to read, then Wedensday and today, two per day. The format was read the passage, answer about ten multiple choice questions, then a constructed responce (writing a paragraph about whatever the prompt asked you). The passages were a mix of fiction and non fiction works, with one short poem.

Now that it's over, I really think it was easier than I originally thought, but by no menas would I want to do ot again. But the possibility does remain: if a "basic" or "below basic" scored this year, as a senior, you'd have to go through remediation, which means you will not get senior privileges, like being able to leave school early, and you will have to retake the test until a "proficient" or "advanced" score is achieved.

Photograhpy woes...

Well, It's been another few weeks here since I've updated the blog. A major highlight (if you can call it that) of my week haas been doing a "Creative Interpretation" project; basically a fancy name for a project that involved taking pictures of various subjects of a certian matter. I.e. we were given the word "narrow." I had to find subjects that related to the word "narrow." I started taking pictures on Sunday, and finished up Sunday night. As I began to rweind the film out of the camera, I felt some resistance. I didn't think anything about it. When I opened the back of the camera to get the roll of film out, I saw ripped film; part still in the cassette, and some still on the spool in the camera. After a few select swear words, I reclused the camera to pervent the film from being damaged any more (from light). Then I told my dad, so we went into out interor bathroom, which is always pitch dark inside, and got the film out of the camera and put it into a black plastic film canister.

I went to school Monday, expecting to attempt to develop the ripped film, but then I remembered that I'd miss 1st preiod bscaues the jazz band was going over to the middle school to see IUP's jazz band play. So I mised out on Monday. Then Monday afternoom, I went out with a fresh roll of film, and tried to take the same pictures that I did the previous day. All went well.

Then on Tuesday, I got a chance to develop my good roll. I'd of tried to develop the ripped roll, but I ran out of time in the 77-minute period. Wednesday, in Photography, I thought I'd make prints, or at least a contact print, but after speiding near 30 minutes reviewing for our big black and white photography test on Thursday, I found I got into the darkroom too slowly, all the enlargers had been taken! I waited for one, but once I got my contact print set up, I exposed it for 10 seconds, the print turned out totally black, so I threw it away. By that time, I had 5 minutes left in class, so I stopped for the day.

Sometime on Wednesday, I realized I'd not have enough time to finish the project on class time, so I decided to go in to school early on Thursday and get things finished. So I woke up early (6:30 AM), and got into school by 7:30. I made my contact print (with a 5 second exposure time), then did two test strips, and made a final print. I'll admit that the print truned out dark, even with a #2 filter and 10 second exposure, but for any points I loose for that, I'll fet 5 extra credit points for turning it in early.

After Thursday's test, I mounted my print, and turned it in.

Needless to say, I can't wait until we move to digital photography...

Now it's Friday, and I have basically nothing to do with myself, since it's Spring break, and I have four days off school...

Boring week

Yes, I've had a boring week, so there's not been much for me to talk about... On Tuesday, I was in the annual band Pops Concert, playing in concert band and jazz band. (I thought the jazz band did very well. :-) ). On Thursday, we had a two-hour delay for rain. It was supposed to be a mixture of freezing rain and snow, but neither ever happened, but the delay was still called. I wasn't complaining, though; I got two extra hours of sleep. Then yesterday (Friday), I had another project to turn in for Photography: the portrait project. We were supposed to have a vocab unit 4 quiz in English, but since too many people weren't ready, the test was pushed to Monday. Then in Algebra II, the Chapter 2 test was supposed to be Friday, as well, but a few students convinced the teacher to have Friday (and Monday) as review days, and then have the test on Tuesday.