Okay, so I've had a few days to rest, recover and reflect after the CM conference in Boiling Springs, NC this past weekend. These are planned and taught by scholars who did doctorate theses on Charlotte Mason; these people know their CM stuff! They also have a vision to join the homeschool, private school and public school communities to bring the benefits of CM's methods to all children, not just a handful of lucky homeschoolers. That vision is exciting, and I love being a part of it.

I didn't attend as much of the conference as I'd thought I would. Last year I brought Miss M, and I spent most of the conference chasing her and trying to keep her quiet. This year I left her home with Daddy, but I missed just as much because I was busy doing other things. I had brought along a modest amount of books to experiment whether they might sell, so I spent any few minutes of free time I had checking in at the vending area (about half of them sold; the experiment was a failure and I won't be doing that again! Fortunately, another vendor took the rest off my hands to sell in her homeschool bookstore, so I wasn't out any money!) I was scheduled to "preside" at three breakout sessions (the only three I got to attend, except the one on assessment), and some chats with AO members, and private counseling sessions with AO members (the private counseling was my favorite part of the conference.)

The first day of the conference, the rooms were freezing - the AC was at 60 degrees, and that night I wasn't able to get warm, which led to leg cramps and a miserable, sleepless night, so I was bleary-eyed on Thursday. I've been doing lots of reading (3 books and lots of internet searches) since I got back, and I suspect that I have a magnesium deficiency, so I'm trying a highly absorbable form of magnesium. Leg cramps have been an ongoing problem for me the past year.

This conference was about assessment - in other words, testing and how to grade tests in a CM education. I've been wanting to have prepared tests like the ones CM used in her PNEU schools, only with questions that pertain to AO books, so I was anxious to learn all I could from this conference. And, although the assessment session was geared for school settings (complete with lots of official-sounding educational-ese jargon), I did have a revelation. One thing that public schools are criticized for is that they "teach to the test." But guess what? Charlotte Mason can be "taught to the test," too! By having your exam questions already laid out, you as the teacher know what to bring out in discussions after the child narrates, or what to write on the board before the child reads. The teacher who spoke about this called it "guided instruction," but it simply means that, if the teacher knows what concept she wants to emphasize in a reading, she can bring it up as she discusses the book with the child. AO Moms sometimes ask about lesson plans, or "shouldn't my child be getting more out this book, like the theme, or something?" and I think that this "guided instruction," directed by knowing what question will be asked on the test, is the answer.

The difference between traditional "teaching to the test" and CM's "teaching to the test" is that the traditional way has kids memorizing facts so they can fill in the right blanks on a test. But a CM exam question is going to be open-ended, designed to make the child think about "essential" issues, so "teaching to the test" will look more like getting him to think about big issues like hypocrisy, or the role of religion in government, or the topical geography of an area as he reads. It means that the parent has to have an idea of what concept is being brought out in a book - why is this book important enough to be used as a school text? So, creating AO exams will partially take the form of figuring out what major concepts are in the books, and why they're being used. In year 7, for example, The Once and Future King is scheduled because it considers different approaches to leadership (I never would have gotten that by reading it myself; I happen to know that because of a post that Wendy C. sent to the HEO list!) I think that will be harder than just coming up with questions that are like the questions CM used (which is what I had originally planned to do!)

How are these tests graded? With a rubric! A rubric is a grid. An essay/answer is graded on a scale of 1-5 according to how correct the student got his facts, how thoroughly he understood the concept, how well he spelled and used grammar, etc. If he understands it well enough to compare it to something else, or make up a story or example based on it, or apply it to another situation, he would het points for comprehension. Then you total up the points. On the grid I just described, with three facets scoring 5 points each, a student could earn a possible 15 points on a question. If he got a total of ten points, he'd have a 10/15 for that question, which would give him a 66 percent for that question. An average of his percentages for all the questions would give him his grade. Brilliant, isn't it? There is reason to suspect that CM herself used some kind of percentage to grade exams - her students were graded. At the conference, they showed us a teacher's grade records of her students with numbers beside them that looked very much like percentages.

The "Book Club" discussion (remember the book Being Human that I've been blogging about?) was a highlight of the conference. Did I mention that already?

Of course, seeing AO people was great, and being around people (both homeschoolers and school people) who know who know what CM is and can appreciate nature and art is always an encouragement.

The sessions were taped on tiny MP3 recorders, and there are plans to make MP3 downloads available (probably for a fee, which I expect to be extremely reasonable) so I'll be catching up with what I missed that way.

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