4th Graders and Camels

[petepie2]

"Some teachers say the question was unfair, arguing it may be unrealistic to expect fourth-graders to know what a camel is."

 

 

http://www.foxnews.com/us/2012/05/16/florida-lowers-passing-grade-for-state-writing-exam-after-over-70-percent/?test=latestnews

[melissad2]

I just read that article on Facebook and I was like:glare: and:confused:

[amo_mea_filiis.]

I think with some pushing, my 7 year old could have answered that! He's never seen a camel walking the streets.

[Chris in VA]

Wow.

[LaxMom]

Um... :confused: My second graders know what a camel is. And they've known what a camel is since... I dunno. They were preschoolers?

 

I would ask how one could go through life and not pick that up, but I am also the same person who has been banned from watching quiz shows after practically losing my mind several years ago while watching an adult request to phone a friend because he could pick the multiple choice answer completing "Hey diddle, diddle, the cat and the ____". So my sense of normal knowledge may be skewed.

[Brigitte]

My thoughts upon reading that article last night was that the teachers from K through 4th grade need to be fired for allowing kids to get all the way to 4th grade without ever having heard of a camel and that it lives in the desert. For Heaven's sake!

[Snickerdoodle]

I think the real question is why 70 percent of the students did not pass this writing question. It simply could not be that they did not know what a camel was.

 

Something is missing in this story.

 

Here is a similar story:

[petepie2]

It seems that the grading was more rigorous this year as compared to last year:

 

"Several changes have been made to the FCAT’s writing portion. In 2011, only one person graded a student’s writing submission. Now, there are two scorers.

 

Grading has become more stringent as well. The rubric for the 2012 writing exam stayed the same, but graders paid more attention and marked off more for punctuation, spelling, grammatical, and support for their argument if applicable."

 

 

http://www2.jcfloridan.com/news/2012/may/15/preliminary-statewide-fcat-writing-scores-dismal-ar-3798583/

[I talk to the trees]

I think the real question is why 70 percent of the students did not pass this writing question. It simply could not be that they did not know what a camel was.

 

Something is missing in this story.

 

Here is a similar story:

:iagree: There is something else going on here. Electronic grading gone wrong, perhaps? Or maybe (and this is frightening) the students really *can't* write, and the teachers are covering up for their lack of instruction?

[BigMamaBird]

Hua? :001_huh:

 

"When do we see camels in Central Florida?"

 

Those kids have never been to the zoo? Looked at an "Animals" board book? Sung "Sally the Camel?" Watched Wonder Pets, or Seaseme Street?

 

Weird.

[FaithManor]

I think the real question is why 70 percent of the students did not pass this writing question. It simply could not be that they did not know what a camel was.

 

Something is missing in this story.

 

Here is a similar story:

 

 

Exactly! I've met a few children from some pretty dire homes...homelessness, perpetual moving, illiterate parents, no books in the house, never been to the zoo, etc. and I could see them making it to 4th grade and if the focus of the school has been pop-culture type reading, little science education, etc. maybe they've never encountered a picture of a camel and therefore would not be able to imagine what it would be like to ride one.

 

But, these children would not be in the majority. They would not even be a significant minority. They would represent only a tiny, tiny portion of the students being tested at least for this area and north of Detroit...possibly this might be more of a problem for Detroit inner city schools, but even most of those kids, at some point or another, have seen pictures of the Detroit zoo so it's doubtful.

 

It is a VERY difficult thing, under pressure of "your teacher will lose her job if you don't do well", "you must do well on these tests to ensure our school's scores are good", timed/watching the clock tick past, etc. for children as young as 9 to write from a prompt such as this. It means they not only have to come up with an imaginative story, but a lot is riding on their ability to do so and in a short period of time. That's a lot of pressure and my guess is that the stress short-circuited the writing process for many children.

 

But, that's just a guess and pure conjecture.

 

Faith

[Wheres Toto]

Hua? :001_huh:

 

"When do we see camels in Central Florida?"

 

Those kids have never been to the zoo? Looked at an "Animals" board book? Sung "Sally the Camel?" Watched Wonder Pets, or Seaseme Street?

 

Weird.

:iagree: My little guys know what a camel is and have for years. Diego? Backyardigans? Wild Kratts? Besides, the camel isn't really the relevant part of the question. It could just as easily be an elephant or a giant snake. It's just a way of getting them to use their imagination and put their thoughts on paper.

[*********]

My six year old knows what a camel is, and that it lives in the desert.

 

Good grief, I don't think *that* is the problem with the test.

[AvasMom]

Someone tell me again why "professional educators" are more qualified than I am. Because my 4th grader can write. Ahem.

[In the Rain]

That is sad. :confused: The article Snickerdoodle posted was interesting too.

[Farrar]

I was discussing this on another forum, actually. I think the teachers had some lame, pathetic excuses. But, I don't really blame them. These are supposed to be some of the poorest written tests in the nation. I'm not inherently against standardized testing, but I am against badly done ones. I don't have any concept what's really being graded on this test. I don't think it's whether or not the kids know what a camel is. But I don't know if it's more about punctuation, spelling and grammar or the quality of the writing.

 

If it's the quality of the writing, then I really question the whole prompt. What's the purpose in having fourth graders be judged on how creatively they can write about camels?

[Pamela H in Texas]

weird

Edited May 24, 2012 by 2J5M9K

[Kathryn]

Exactly! I've met a few children from some pretty dire homes...homelessness, perpetual moving, illiterate parents, no books in the house, never been to the zoo, etc. and I could see them making it to 4th grade and if the focus of the school has been pop-culture type reading, little science education, etc. maybe they've never encountered a picture of a camel and therefore would not be able to imagine what it would be like to ride one.

 

But, these children would not be in the majority. They would not even be a significant minority. They would represent only a tiny, tiny portion of the students being tested at least for this area and north of Detroit...possibly this might be more of a problem for Detroit inner city schools, but even most of those kids, at some point or another, have seen pictures of the Detroit zoo so it's doubtful.

 

It is a VERY difficult thing, under pressure of "your teacher will lose her job if you don't do well", "you must do well on these tests to ensure our school's scores are good", timed/watching the clock tick past, etc. for children as young as 9 to write from a prompt such as this. It means they not only have to come up with an imaginative story, but a lot is riding on their ability to do so and in a short period of time. That's a lot of pressure and my guess is that the stress short-circuited the writing process for many children.

 

But, that's just a guess and pure conjecture.

 

Faith

 

:iagree:

[swellmomma]

good lord, my kids must be geniuses then, they all knew camels by name before age 2. Amazing what hanging out at the zoo can do.

[happypamama]

My DH's answer was, "It's not a science question; it's a writing exercise. There's absolutely no reason they couldn't have faked something, even to say, 'I jumped on the camel, and we flew off into the air' if they really didn't know what a camel was. It didn't say it had to be realistic; fantasy would have been totally okay."

 

(Okay, he also said, "Has anyone in this town ever even SEEN a camel?," which was a parody of one of our favorite lines from "Arrested Development.")

 

My answer was, "And people wonder why I homeschool. No, no they don't, not after reading this."

[higginszoo]

My sister-in-law is going to ask my niece to narrate an answer when she wakes up from her nap. She's only two, but I doubt she'll have a problem. :confused:

[GoVanGogh]

It is a VERY difficult thing, under pressure of "your teacher will lose her job if you don't do well", "you must do well on these tests to ensure our school's scores are good", timed/watching the clock tick past, etc. for children as young as 9 to write from a prompt such as this. It means they not only have to come up with an imaginative story, but a lot is riding on their ability to do so and in a short period of time. That's a lot of pressure and my guess is that the stress short-circuited the writing process for many children.

:iagree:

I would imagine that the majority of children froze from stress.

From talking with neighbors - both adults and children - there is so much stress put on these poor children that their teachers' jobs are on the line, that they must do well on the tests or their teachers will be fired and the school taken over.

Our state releases their standardized tests to the public. The tests are so incredibly dumbed down, the children really have nothing to fear! Sadly, they don't know that.

I give DC the tests - DC passed fifth grade tests in first grade, a reflection of the low standards and not an indication that I am a wonderful teacher or DC is brilliant.

[ErinE]

If you asked my ds to write about Star Wars, he would write pages and pages. It wouldn't be very interesting, but it would be imaginative and for the most part correctly spelled and punctuated. Right now he's loving the semi-colon so he takes every opportunity to correct my writing and enourage its use. But this is a high interest subject for him and he could spend hours talking about Anakin, Darth Vader, and Count Drago so the writing flows naturally from the things he wants to say.

 

I think the biggest problem isn't that kids don't know what a camel is. It's that the prompt requires them to make up a story about something not very interesting. A camel ride? First thing out of my son's mouth would be, "But where is the camel? How did the camel get there? I don't know how to ride a camel. Where would I go? What would I do when I get there?" The list of possibilities would stymie his thought process and cause him to freeze.

 

These prompts are stupid, stupid, stupid and give no indication of a child's writing ability.

[Teachin'Mine]

My dd would have loved writing that story! She had already ridden a camel by 4th grade. But even if she hadn't and knew little about them, it's not asking for information - nothing about the storing of fat, not needing to drink often, etc. - it's asking for a creative story about what you would do. IMO creative writing is way more important at that age than "spit out the facts" writing. Then again, that's the only kind we did. If the children do truly know how to write, then how sad that they've had such limited experiences. I would think that with the world available online, and of course in books, that teachers could do so much more in the classroom to bring a variety of experiences into the classroom. The schools are obviously failing to do that.

[SKL]

Honestly, I read the question and I think it was an awful question for typical 4th graders. For me, it has nothing to do with whether they know what a camel is. First, the question was poorly written. Second, a child's performance would have depended on not whether he has seen a camel, but how much he knows about the use of camels in other parts of the world. A camel may have been a beast of burden on the spice road, a racing animal somewhere in northern Africa, or a carnival trick in the local zoo (among other possibilities). My kids have ridden camels in the zoo - around and around in a circle - but if they wrote about that, I'm thinking they would have scored poorly. I've ridden a camel in India - a bit of a different experience, but still probably not what the test writers were looking for. They could have come up with a topic that most nine-year-olds could write about intelligently.

[fraidycat]

Total threadjack, but we lived in the Canadian prairies, nowhere near a zoo with exotic type animals, but my one of my favorite "words" is from my niece when she was teeny tiny, barely over a year old (early talker). She was naming animals in a board book for me. A hippopotamus was a "poppohommomus". :001_smile:

[SKL]

My dd would have loved writing that story! She had already ridden a camel by 4th grade. But even if she hadn't and knew little about them' date=' it's not asking for information - nothing about the storing of fat, not needing to drink often, etc. - it's asking for a creative story about what you would do. IMO creative writing is way more important at that age than "spit out the facts" writing. [/quote']

 

But I think it's unrealistic to do this in a testing format at the age of 9. There will be many kids at that age who, under time and testing pressure, can't quickly picture what the testers are looking for. It takes time and organization to decide how to approach that kind of question, and by the time a kid has an idea of what to write, he may run out of time and fail to complete his thoughts, let alone confirm that his grammar and spelling is correct. What was the need to choose an exotic topic that most kids have not previousy imagined, let alone experienced?

[Truscifi]

Exactly! I've met a few children from some pretty dire homes...homelessness, perpetual moving, illiterate parents, no books in the house, never been to the zoo, etc. and I could see them making it to 4th grade and if the focus of the school has been pop-culture type reading, little science education, etc. maybe they've never encountered a picture of a camel and therefore would not be able to imagine what it would be like to ride one.

 

But, these children would not be in the majority. They would not even be a significant minority. They would represent only a tiny, tiny portion of the students being tested at least for this area and north of Detroit...possibly this might be more of a problem for Detroit inner city schools, but even most of those kids, at some point or another, have seen pictures of the Detroit zoo so it's doubtful.

 

It is a VERY difficult thing, under pressure of "your teacher will lose her job if you don't do well", "you must do well on these tests to ensure our school's scores are good", timed/watching the clock tick past, etc. for children as young as 9 to write from a prompt such as this. It means they not only have to come up with an imaginative story, but a lot is riding on their ability to do so and in a short period of time. That's a lot of pressure and my guess is that the stress short-circuited the writing process for many children.

 

But, that's just a guess and pure conjecture.

 

Faith

 

:iagree: I live here, and I know many public school students who are terrified of Fcat testing. It makes it so much harder for them to perform to the best of their abilities when so much pressure is put on them. Also, I've read portions of the tests. Many of the open ended questions are terribly written.

[petepie2]

I think the issue lies in Florida having more rigorous grading standards this year. This article says that this year they took off more points for spelling, grammar, punctuation, etc. Last year over 80% of 4th graders "passed", compared to 27% this year. The problem wasn't just with 4th graders. The article also reports huge drops for 8th and 10th graders.

 

While I'm sure many students are stressed during these tests, they were stressed last year, too. And the tests probably had stupid writing prompts last year if I had to guess. I think Florida raised their standards and students couldn't meet them. The sad thing is that instead of reevaluating their methods of teaching writing, they change the grading scale and complain about camels.

[Mommy22alyns]

Oh my goodness. I asked Rebecca what a camel was and she looked at me like this: :blink:. "Really, Mom?" Of course she knew. And we don't have them here in TN either. :rolleyes:

 

Okay, I asked her the entre prompt, and even though she's a WWE student, she still came up with a good short answer.

Edited May 17, 2012 by Mommy22alyns

[higginszoo]

My 2 year old niece's answer -- "Hold on tight and don't fall off. Camel rides are bumpy." Ok, so she wasn't in a story spinning mood (sometimes she can spin some good ones). But apparently, it IS from experience. The Knoxville Zoo offers camel rides at times, and she was NOT impressed with hers (she has liked riding other animals, but the camels are too bumpy).

[PeacefulChaos]

:ack2: :svengo:

There are no words. I am just...:001_huh:

[Teachin'Mine]

But I think it's unrealistic to do this in a testing format at the age of 9. There will be many kids at that age who, under time and testing pressure, can't quickly picture what the testers are looking for. It takes time and organization to decide how to approach that kind of question, and by the time a kid has an idea of what to write, he may run out of time and fail to complete his thoughts, let alone confirm that his grammar and spelling is correct. What was the need to choose an exotic topic that most kids have not previousy imagined, let alone experienced?

 

True. I'm still baffled that such a large percentage failed. If their only goal is to grade them on their writing, then it might be better if they give them a choice of two or three prompts.

[plain jane]

:eek: :blink: I needed a good laugh tonight. :tongue_smilie: Thanks for posting. :lol:

[Kirch]

I've always been a bit baffled as to how writing can truly, accurately, and effectively measured/graded on a standardized test (at any grade level). There's only so much a rubric can cover, kwim? And what are the kids supposed to focus on primarily? Punctuation, grammar, and spelling? I can write sheer nonsense that is properly spelled and punctuated and uses correct grammar. Creativity? Clarity? Organization? Even if you want all of it, that's a lot to ask in a cold writing session with no editing and revision and with a time limit. And then the grader gets all of, what, two minutes or less to evaluate it? I just don't buy it.