Katrina saves the day...

The lovely state of Florida is soon to embark on S.S PARCC

A.K.A Partnership for Assessment of Readiness for College and Careers

To prepare for this new adventure students have been learning a whole new way to write

//text based writing\\

They are given a reading passage and have to respond to a task in written form. This is a lot better than writing to a silly prompt although there are set backs to text based writing...let me give you an example.

The last week and a half of school my students were given their final for my class which of course was an essay. Sixth graders were given a passage on rebuilding houses after hurricane Katrina.
Here is where the fun part begins

I am looking over their essays and I come across an essay that is unlike all the rest! Clearly this student did not read the passage closely or he has no recollection of the damage that hurricane Katerina caused.

He wrote an essay about this girl
Yep, you guessed it named Katrina
Who helped rebuild New Orleans after a "tornado" destroyed the area.
He went into all this detail as to what the tornado did and then came the president of the United States who flew Katrina up to the White House to award her a medal. Katrina was so nervous to meet the president that she was speechless! The president decided to fly Katerina all over America so she can help other cities that needed to be re-built. Children across the country admired her and wanted to grow up to be just like Katrina.

By the time I was finished reading his essay I was laughing so hard I was crying...it just kept getting better and better with each line.
and of course I could not keep this essay to myself I had to share it with other teachers around me...who also found it highly amusing.