Madhouse Monday

The first day of the tests started today and it's the usual chaos and reigning confusion.

You get the kids lined up outside their classrooms and you tell them get colours ( coloured pencils ), pencils, rubbers and a ruler, they disappear for 5 minutes and the next conversation goes like this.
" have you got colours?"
"no"
"where are they?"
"in the (class)room"
"get them "
and so on down the line so you end up repeating the same conversation 12 times out of 20 kids. Its definitely not good for your health. So after that, you go up to your classroom.
"OK, get your colours out"
"teacher, teacher"
"what"
"colours in the room!"
"what? you told me you had them, you waste of good pork on a stick - or in your case a good waste of a piglet or 3 on a stick"

Thus resulting in a quick decision, are they intelligent enough to understand when you tell them to write the colour next to the thing ie writing red next to the ball, when you say "colour the ball red" or should you le them run back down to the class to get the colours or just leave them to wallow in the swamp of stupity that they made for themselves. Difficult.

Exams are an easy and difficult time because you don't need to think too much, just pass out the papers and let them get on with it. But then you have the listening and speaking tests where you end up saying "Colour the ball red" in your sleep. It really is a case of repetition - twice the first time around and twice the 2nd time.

Its still amazing the lack of response sometimes and the lack of thought too. "Colour the whale grey" brings an amazing amount of replies - grey, black, red, green, purple or nothing at all." Two test sentences contain "we had a picnic" and immediately they go to the first picnic they see - which is usually the one in the forest. Unfortunately, the sentence continues ".. at the beach" And when you read the 2nd sentence out, its a wild scramble for the rubber as some of them realise what has happened and try and change it.

Of course, some don't even try and listen. You tell them right at the beginning it is a listening test and to write their name etc on the front, you look up a minute later to see at least two people drawing random lines over one of the storyboard pictures. DOH!