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testing question…God's Design science
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We are using God’s Design for Heaven & Earth for science this year with my 3rd grader. She understands it fine but is really struggling with the tests. Up until the year she was using A.C.E. curriculum which is straight fill-in-the-blanks with pre-tests before you take a test and the tests come right off the pre-test. Also God’s Design is set for 3-6th grade (the part she’s doing with a separate part for 1 & 2 grade and an additonal part for 7 & 8 grade) and since she’s at the younger end of that age range, I think maybe the tests are just a little too difficult for her. Is there some way to make them more manageable for her? I can’t think of any way besides writing a pre-test for each one.
Are you determined to use the tests? We just do GDfS CM-style, reading through the sections and doing oral narration (1st and 3rd grade here). Often we will follow up with some of the activities in the book and/or related YouTube videos, games, apps, library books they can look through during quiet time, etc.
I would be fine with skipping them but I don’t see DH going for that. I think I am just going to quiz her on them before she take them. I went through the one she’s supposed to take for the section she just completed and only 2 of the 10 multiple choice questions were from the questions in the lessons–the others were all drawn from just the lesson. Two of them weren’t even explicitly stated in the lesson, you had to figure out the answer. And that quiz is over 11 lessons, so she’s either supposed to remember everything she read over the lat month, or re-read all of them every time (and hopefully remember all that). That’s just too much for a 3rd grader IMO.
Bumping this up because we’re having the same problem again this year with the God’s Design for Life series. I was going to just have her do an oral narration that I copied down, or an oral essay question, but it doesn’t really work well for narrations. And I tried an oral essay question today, asking her to tell me what she knew about photosynthesis, and got 3 sentences.
“Plants make photosynthesis through their leaves. The leaves need water, sunlight, and carbon dioxide to make food for the plant. The stoma [I think she meant stomata] is what absorbs carbon dioxide through little holes for the leaf.”
I don’t think DH is going to be satisfied with that. He says she has to have some sort of written work for a “test”. I HATE the actual tests. They’re too difficult for a 4th grader and I even tried having her do one open-book and she still had trouble (not to mention I didn’t buy the teacher’s guides because I wasn’t planning on using the tests…though I have the CDs from other God’s Design books which includes all the tests for all the books…so I don’t have the answers to the tests). I’m about ready to scrap God’s Design altogether and go back to A.C.E. Science which at least has manageable, low-stress tests.
Is she enjoying God’s Design? If so, don’t switch. What about having her notebook some lessons? That is a way she can show her learning without the tests. (We use God’s Design with my 5th, 4th, 2nd, 1st, and 3 tagalong little ones. We do NOT use the tests.)
So here is what I mean:
For each lesson give her the option to narrate orally to you about it (you can write it down or not, but it sounds like your husband wants things written down) or make an illustration or complete a diagram you’ve printed from the CD or the internet that relate to the lesson. Then have her tell you about it (ahem, narrate) and write her words down on the back of her page. Don’t do it for every lesson, but try to do it for several over the course of the weeks and months so she is building her own ‘science notebook’ for your husband to see what she’s learning about. You will probably be surprised to see her look back through it over the weeks as well (reviewing past knowledge!).
No, I don’t think notebooking is needed, or tests. But sometimes you want or need a way to show what you’ve covered (either to the state or a spouse). Or you may have a child who simply enjoys notebooking!
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