I can't spill the beans just yet on their exact scores, but our girls just finished their first standardized test after being homeschooled for nearly three years. I am just so proud of them and all their hard work! They did well, better than I hoped!
Being their "proctor" as they took their tests, it was natural for them to ask me questions as they worked away. It was hard to refrain from expressing my disappointment when they seemed to have forgotten content of what we had learned this past year...some things they struggled with we just recently finished working on and I wanted to bang my head against a wall!
My oldest is my perfectionist and just like her daddy when it comes to test taking. They both overthink their answers and doubt themselves trying to get that correct answer. Many times I have told her not to make extra work for herself and follow her initial response. We've struggled this year, often with her in tears and both of us frustrated due to her self-doubt and anxiety over making mistakes. Over and over we talk about doing her best, understanding mistakes are just places we need to spend more time learning concepts, etc. Seeing her scores on her test results just filled me with elation. All her self-doubts and anxiety had no foundation in her skill level at all. She scored so well!
My younger daughter is more like me. She catches on quickly to most things and has that engineering mind: able to figure things out and deduce answers by finding patterns, using the process of elimination, etc. I worried that she would be too quick to answer and make unnecessary mistakes (something we've been working on this year). She had very few questions for me during her testing and when I asked her to show me the part of the test she wasn't sure of, she calmly and logically explained why she answered what she did and when I asked if she had any questions, she had answered her own doubts and didn't truly need my help. Her test results showed her weaknesses accurately, but man, her strengths? Wow. It was amazing to see her scores.
Seeing their results was validating for me as a teacher. Not just in being able to teach them, but also in the curriculum choices we've made for them. There are so many options out there for curriculum and you want to have chosen quality learning for your children. Our first year we had so many struggles with curriculum that I worried that I was letting them fall behind or teaching them at too low of a level, that maybe I should have been pushing them more. This test is one that other homeschool and public school peers take. Their percentage scores were high amongst where they fell among their peers. All my doubts have no basis. Now I can use their scores to help me determine where to focus our learning for next year and deciding our curriculum options. God is good!
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