Report Card Weekend

This is report card weekend. School in Kenya is divided into three three-month terms. This past week has been Final Week. John especially has been swamped with >marking (grading) exams. Do the maths. Each class at St. Anthony’s has 85+ students. There are four classes. That’s 340+ students. He reported about an hour ago that he has marked over 4000 questions. It took him about 20 hours to finish mark his exams. He will be so glad to be finished and be able to think about something else.

Here are a couple of examples from his Form I (freshman) maths exam:

1. A large scale farmer uses ½ of his land to plant maize (corn), 1/5 for grazing, 1/3 of the remainder for horticulture and the rest for beans. If he uses 20 hectares for horticulture farming determine how much land he uses for beans. (Worth 4 marks/points)

2. Matthew bought a suit for sh 2400. He is going to resell it and marked it a price that after allowing a 10% discount he would make a profit of 20%. Calculate the marked price. (4 marks)

3. A cylindrical tank whose diameter is 2.8 metres and height of 80 cm is initially empty. Water whose volumn is 985.6 litres is poured into the tank. Determine the fraction of the tank filled with water. (4 marks)

I’m luckier. I only have to mark (grade) my own students. That’s 148 exams. My exams don’t have to be marked until we return to school in September. However, I must have the Oxford Dictionary on the desk beside me as I work. It is probably the best money spent since we have been in Kenya. If fact, I have two: one to use at home and the other is kept at school. There is a real difference between American English and British English not only in word usage but also in spelling. I am constantly having to double check to see if what I think is an error is in fact correct. Here are a few spellings that I need to count as correct: realised, colour, travelled, practise, mould, offense, labour, and foetus.

Here is an example from my Form I exam:
Read the following story. Fill in the blanks so that the story makes sense. (10 marks)
Ogre Stories
There are many ___________________ narratives that depict ogres. Ogres are ___________________ characters who disguise themselves to deceive foolish and gullible _____________________. These evil characters do __________________ things like killing people and ______________________ them up. Ogres have nothing _____________________ in them, and indeed they never change their evil nature.
Ogre stories present the contest between ___________________ and evil in the world. As we have said, ogres disguise themselves as good and well meaning, but in the end their _________________ nature reappears. Their aim is to destroy. In some stories they kill and get away with it. Yet in others, the ogres are eventually _____________________. Such stories reassure us and show that good ____________________ over evil.



Maths answers:
40 hectares, sh 3200, 1/5

English answers:
oral, evil, people, evil, eating, good, good, true, destroyed, triumphs