Jabberwocky for 2005 March 31 (entry 0)

(3) Thu Mar 31 2005 17:28 Ahhhh!: The weekend is coming. I need to grade placement essays tomorrow morning and then I can fall apart. That is, if I grade all my papers tonight and get it over with.

Rachel is home, all sick, and my nose won't quit running.

I planted everything that needs planting except the flat of thyme, so that's on the agenda for this weekend. Also, my car is going in for servicing so it can be ready to go to .... UTAH!

For my contribution to the snack table during placement grading I'm going to spread rye bread with dilled cream cheese, then put smoked salmon on top. Then garnish with a cucumber slice and a cherry tomato slice. I bought some "party" toothpicks in case the whole thing doesn't stay stacked up. They are dyed all different colors. I would have bought the plain ones, but these were ten cents cheaper than the round ones--go figure. The cheapest toothpicks were the flat kind, but I don't like those. I don't know why. I just have an aversion to them, which is silly, because they will test a cake just as well as a round toothpick.

I hope the dyes on the party toothpicks don't kill us.

Comments:

Posted by John at Fri Apr 01 2005 10:16

I just read about how there is now a writing portion to the SAT. You should apply to grade those papers--it would certainly be a step up from the papers you normally read!

Just for the record, I am against such subjectivity in such an important test.

Posted by Susie at Fri Apr 01 2005 11:39

On Seinfield, George bought the cheapest envelopes for his wedding invitations, and his fiancee died from licking them.

This may be your last trip to Utah. Because we're moving!!!

Posted by Frances at Fri Apr 01 2005 18:19

The SAT exams are graded holistically, which is a concept a lot of non-English teachers don't understand, but it's how most essays are graded nowadays. Holistic is not necessarily subjective because there is an established rubric and very firm guidelines. It's a little better than the old objective grading of errors because a bright student with wonderful ideas but poor spellilng (for example) gets a break. I just spent the day grading placement exams holistically. There were about thirty English teachers there, and we read 1000 essays, two or three readers each, with virtually no discrepancies. It's a good system. I can't recall ever having a student in class who was placed at the wrong level since we started using this system. It used to happen all the time.