when only one out of five does...

Our fifth grade exam was yesterday - this is our fourth big one this year - in line with Turkish ministry of education requirements.  

At my previous school - the exam schedule was set up at the beginning of the year.

Here it's set a week in advance.

At my previous school - the exams were multiple choice, fill-in-the-bland, short answer, and writing.

Here - multiple choice is not allowed - and most is grade by a rubric rather than right or wrong.  

At my previous school - the exams were relatively easy.  Most kids score well.  The teachers taught to the skill specifically because the mark on the exam was all the students, parents, etc. cared about.

Here - we focus on the learner.  We are giving exams on the reader - we are focusing on transferrable skills (like determining Importance) and testing them.  And as I said before most of mine did terribly.  

Mistake 1) I drilled vocabulary, not realizing they couldn't transfer the skill of knowing a synonym of a word - to plugging that word into a fill-in-the-blank sentence.

Mistake 2 - I didn't drill them enough with independent practice.  We couldn't keep up in the reading, and I should have just set it aside so that we could work on the exam skills - my students had a hard time determining what was important in each chapter and asking questions in each - and forget context clues.  

Mistake 3 - one person has been in charge of making the exams and we've had little input.  

Mistake 4 - All our students are expecting to "move up" their reading level with each quiz.

This one person is our group leader.  There are five of us - and our reading groups are divided by their reading levels - so that we have homogenous reading groups.  Our group leader sold this idea by promising parents that it was our job to raise their reading levels.  I didn't think about it at the time - but I've worked with low level readers.  It doesn't happen overnight.  It doesn't happen in one year.   

We've got he kids in 5 levels, and I'm with the 4th level (2nd to bottom).  I'm used to low level readers, and I prefer it.  Our group leader has the group smack in the middle, one above me.  After this exam- all of her students scored high.  In fact, 8 of the 10 top places were her students.  I think our team looked at each other sort of baffled.  Our G.L has been the G.L since the beginning.

And so has this huge disconnect.