This was Monday. Group testing second graders in writing.

By Wednesday, after testing a couple of kids with questionable symptoms (“social distance” of less than 12 inches), and listening to the daily-worsening news, I decided NOT to continue testing. Too risky.

Another week at Del Paso Elementary. The testing is still slow but is moving along smoothly. By Friday, second grade was done and we’d started first grade.

Just your average sixth grader waiting to go in the library:

Twin Rivers USD invited retired teachers to come back to test students at grades K-6 on the English Language Performance Assessment for California (ELPAC). We were trained on Monday, I started working on Wednesday at Del Paso Heights Elementary, but had a slow start because of logging-in issues. By Friday, things were moving smoothly.

Monday was our last day at Northwood.
Then we moved on to FC Joyce. We had a very nice testing space – unless we were relocated for one reason or another.
This 1st grade Afghani boy was the opposite of the Skip-it story from last week. He read all four passages out loud accurately but so fast that I encouraged him to slow down so he could be sure of his answers to the questions. It didn’t matter, he got them all right. Hurray!
Friday was Dr Seuss Day and all schedules were disrupted.
The librarian:

Another week, another dollar. We were at Woodlake and Northwood Schools this week. Biggest interruption  this week was a whole-school fire drill. Teachers hold up a green paper if all students are accounted for, red if someone is missing. Everyone is silent – mostly.

Are you wondering what else I did this week? I obsessed over a 500-piece jigsaw puzzle of Cinque Terre in Italy. Every spare minute. Sigh.

ELPAC testing can offer some humorous interactions with students. For one part of the test, I showed a first-grade student a picture of an Angora rabbit, then the student had to read the paragraph all by themselves with zero help from me. The student struggled with the second word for such a long time that I suggested she could skip it. Problem solved! She read the paragraph rather rapidly like this:

“The skip-it skip-it has skip-it that is skip-it skip-it and skip-it. The skip-it skip-it can skip-it up to skip-it skip-it. The skip-it skip-it skip-it be cut skip-it skip-it skip-it. The skip-it can be skip-it to make skip-it, like skip-it and skip-it. This skip-it, skip-it skip-it is skip-it skip-it.”

After she finished, I asked 3 questions to see how well she understood what she’d read.

We worked at Woodlake on Thursday, Valentine’s Day. There was an assembly in the morning, an art teacher (students with paint-covered hands), parties, rain, and a dental hygienist working nearby. Needless to say, we practiced patience and completed very few tests. Smile.

We only started working Thursday, so only 2 days at Babcock Elementary.
The best part is working with Linda and Adrienne.

English Language Proficiency Assessments for California. This one-day refresher course is required before we can begin testing. One of the retired teachers in the room thought our presenter was perhaps an anesthesiologist because “he really puts me to sleep.”

We had to do an additional 2 hours on our own, online, taking the calibration quizzes to qualify to be a tester.

My team included Adrienne and Linda. We are testing only TK and Kindergarten, students new to the school system. The placement test went very quickly, so it looks like we’ll only get 6-7 days work this time.

English Language Proficiency Assessment for California. Today there was a training. School will start in a few days. Teams of retired teachers will be testing students entering the school system for the first time – mostly kindergarteners.