I'm a STAR!

These past two weeks we have been administering the STAR exams at Westmoor HS. The past two weeks have been challenging to me due to the block schedules that have been in effect during the testing. I have been a substitute at a school that had block schedules, but it wasn't up to me to come up with the lesson plans. Normally Westmoor has 55 minute periods, but with the block schedule the periods were about 80 minutes long. In order to prepare for these block periods, I decided to over prepare. Although I have enough content to cover the block, I still feel rushed because I want to fit everythng in the allotted time. Due to the scheduling, my classes only meet every other day, so although our meetings are longer, our time together for the week is ultimately shorter. With this in mind, I am forced to give the students more homework. I found it interesting that on our first day back to the normal schedule, I ran out of time during my lesson. I guess what i've llearned from this experience is that yoou must be flexible with these types of standardized tests. I felt like I had a sort of routine down with my students, and then a "monkey wrench" seemed to be thrown into my plans wwith these tests. I'm sure once i've been teaching for a while these tests won't be such a distraction, but for now they've really thrown me for a looop.