being a grade 3 tutor: fail

i am currently marking the exams from my grade 3 and 4 classes... and all i can think of is : FAIL. fail to you kids for making absolutely ridiculous mistakes that make absolutely no sense to me and fail to me for not drilling in the concepts hard enough. well i tried, but your attention spans dont last long enough...

1. draw a bar graph for the following data...
the sample sizes go from 1 to 8 and they give you a table with 9 rows... one student decides to put a scale of one square = 5 and to top that off, her scale reads 5,10,15,20,25,30,35,40, 40

2. same question
another student colored in groups of boxes to represent each sample... to paint a picture, little clusters of squares all over the graph....

3. find the perimeter and area
area = count the squares.. apparently that's too difficult for half the class...

4. worded problems
i really really dont see why over half the class couldnt subtract 26 from 60?!
one student's working out showed 60-26=26 and another 60-26=72....

most of them drew pictures on the last page... maybe i'll have to give them marks for their drawings instead...

that's only the grade 3's so far so hopefully i'll still have hair on my head by the end of marking the grade 4s...

antimicrobials

two of my grade 4 students carry dettol antimicrobial gels with them. How hip i thought to myself. For some reason, I didn't think they would appreciate to the full extent which bacterial species the gel is ineffective against, so i kept my mouth shut...

one shot , half ko.

i now remember the reason why i don't do shots. someone please remind me for next time!

girl genius =)

FIRST OF ALL, i beat you to the punch minh! =)

A few months ago when we were sitting at a restaurant called Lazy moes in the westside having a lovely lunch (details means you can't deny it! i can also look up the date as well in my organiser! hehehe) and the westgate bridge came up in our conversation..

minh: ooooh, is the west gate bridge in america?
me: ......
and then after explaining where it was, i figured i could let it slide considering she is not a fellow westsider...

coming back to a few MINUTES ago... we ended up talking about the bridge yet again

me: hahah remember a few months ago when you didn't know where the westgate was?!
minh: pscht!
me: well at least you know where it is now...!
minh: yes... it's in australia
me: where in australia?
minh: sydney.

oh dear... second time's the charm, you'll hopefully remember it now! hahaha either that or my fingers are crossed you never have to take the westgate bridge otherwise some serious lost'ness is bound to ensue...

the old adage: men are no good with directions...

just got back from party number six this week and i am officially exhausted... this particular party was held in woop woop land 15 minutes drive from the airport... kudos to the two birthday boys for booking out a whole entire (very gorgeous and well equipped and furnished) house for a 21st... house parties are definitely the way to go but you can't exactly book a house in the middle of suburbia considering the amount of noise and rowdiness that usually comes hand in hand with 21st's... so woop woop it had to be... being the designated driver, I had to rely on the five other people (yes, five cos we squished one extra one in, the more the merrier!) for directions... two were equipped with google maps on their iphones so we were all set.... apparently not... chaos soon ensued... a number of wrong or missed turns later we were heading down a freeway to sunbury... and with no u-turns allowed on freeways we had to keep driving until there was a way to go back... woop woop freeways don't have frequent exits either... cars zooming in both directions... 9.30 pm at night, trying to find 'the magical dirt road' that lead to the house proved more difficult then expected... at various times I became extremely stressed and anxious... but yes, back to the point, of the five, one was a guy and the rest were girls... men may be horrible at directions but so too are women! either that, or googlemap sucks...