vampirate

Where I teach, we pretest everyone in every subject at the beginning of the year. Ostensibly this is to decide where to place them, and to allow us to individualize their schedules and curricula, etc. It can be very useful, but often times it's bunk; you know the kids don't know anything about what you're going to teach them (or at least nothing solid or organized enough to put a dent in your curriculum), so you're just wasting a couple of days going through the motions.

The pretest for my 5th/6th grade Life Science class, for lack of a better idea, begins with a picture of a cell with the labels for the major parts whited out. Admittedly, it's kind of a manky photocopy of a photocopy, but anybody in a "basic biology" kind of mindset would (I hope) recognize it immediately. But, you know, little kids are all kinds of unpredictable and weird (*see footnote). One little girl sitting in the front row leaned forward and whispered conspiratorially, "Mr. Dan, I know what this is!" then got up, walked over to my chair, cupped her hands to my ear, and announced, "It's where babies come from!"

Yeah, I'm glad I'm not teaching "Health."

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*I think that's why I kind of liked The Pacifier, even though it was retarded.