For students, it’s that time of year once again

Published 1:37 pm Thursday, October 2, 2008

SNOQUALMIE VALLEY – A rite of passage that has become as familiar as final exams or the prom started this week in the Snoqualmie Valley School District.

The district began administering the Washington Assessment of Student Learning (WASL) on Tuesday, with tests being taken until May 3.

The standardized test, divided into four sections of writing, reading, listening comprehension and mathematics, is taken by every fourth-, seventh- and 10th-grader in the state, with a few exceptions.

The WASL has been gradually phased into Washington’s schools since first being administered in 1997 as a litmus test of how the state’s schools were doing. The class of 2008, present-day sixth-graders, will be required to pass their 10th-grade tests in order to graduate from high school.

Nancy Rudy, an assistant principal at Mount Si High School, said the school has been preparing students all year for the test. A WASL newsletter was sent out regularly to help teachers identify ways they can prepare students for the types of problems and questions that may be asked on the tests.

The testing experience itself has also been structured to ease students into the four-part exam. Tests are only taken in the morning on certain days, and parents can drop off goodies that students can snack on during the day.

A special assembly was held last week to encourage the students to do their best and to recognize students who were proficient in all the categories from the previous year.

“We have been promoting it as an event,” Rudy said.

George Warren, a seventh-grade Snoqualmie Middle School math teacher and the team leader for the seventh grade, said students have been prepped in his class all year to do well in math, not just take a test in math.

“We are not teaching to the test,” Warren said. “Sometimes I’ll ‘WASL-ize’ a question, but the skills are still taught.”

Dana Nohavec, a fourth-grade teacher at Snoqualmie Elementary, has been preparing her class since the beginning of the year and has done everything she can to make the WASL test-taking experience a little lighter and more fun for the youngest students.

Since she started giving the test – the “WAHOOSL,” as it has been dubbed in her class – last week, it has been accompanied by songs and activities about how fun the test is to take.

Although her students readily admit that taking a test is not the most exciting thing to do in school, many are optimistic about the coming weeks.

“I think it will be really fun and exciting because we will get to take breaks and eat,” said fourth-grader Sindrae Parks.

Other students are genuinely interested in how they and their peers will score on the test. Although it is the first time any of the fourth-graders have taken the WASL, they all have experience with standardized tests, having taken the Iowa Test of Basic Skills in third grade.

“I think it will be mostly boring, but it should be exciting because you don’t know what grade you are going to get,” said fourth-grader Sean Graffis.