Testing dreams

It gives me a perfect excuse to reminisce about my boy's first testing experience, about a year ago:

Yesterday my boy took his state-mandated standardized test. This test is due in August, and most people take it in May or June, but he has seasonal allergies (aka hay fever) and is either doped up or miserable during those months. Rather than add more torture, I decided to spread it around and have him take the test a little early.

He had never been tested before so we went over test-taking strategies. I periodically have him do test prep workbooks so he was familiar with filling in the little bubble. He thinks they are kind of fun. We had also done a practice test so he understood the concept of having a time limit. That is something I'm not good at working on in our daily table work.

The night before the test he went to sleep right away, which struck me as odd because usually before a big event he has trouble sleeping. The morning of the test he woke up in good spirits but admitted to being a little nervous. He told me he'd had a dream that "paper airplanes made of test papers were attacking me!" Then he went on with a big grin: "But I shot them all down, all except the math ones!"

Turns out he was right to feel that way about math. His computation score was pretty low, but was raised quite by a bit by his problem-solving skills. Whew! His results will probably be similar this time, too. But I don't think he'll have any bad dreams.