I just finished grading the last paper I have to grade that has been turned in. The last paper, that is, until the finals.
Of course, finals start today. I will have 30 essays to grade for finals from college. Plus the four papers which haven’t been turned in yet. So this week I’ll have 34 essays to grade.
Then I have my high school classes. My 8/9 grade English class turned in their essay for the final last week. I already graded it and they know, going in to the fill in the blank final, what they have on that section. They had a take home grammar test this weekend. I told them they could use their books, but not their parents. My 10-12 English class was supposed to write an in-class final, but I decided that I didn’t want to deal with it. We wrote a paper last week and the week before. Surely that is enough. So they are having one fill-in-the- blank, one take home, and one multiple choice set of questions. Vocab, grammar, and author names. So the multiple choice is one of 20 for each question. It’s a 5% chance on pure guesses, not a 25% chance.
I actually worked very hard at my high school classes having multiple kinds of finals. That gives them a good flavor of tests. Since many of them have this as their first “regular classroom experience†I wanted to make sure they would have plenty of testing experience. When I am homeschooling, my kids don’t have tests. They have quizzes and do the work, but they have to do the work to 100%. I just don’t give tests. I figure that I am not unusual. So my hs homeschool students will have had tests.