The End, Part 2

Our second full day in The Lake District was slightly less rainy than the day before, so we decided to brave the elements and do a walk to Near Sawrey in order to visit Hill Top, Beatrix Potter's home and inspiration for many of her stories.

After our views from the bus the previous day, I looked forward to seeing the area first hand and taking some pictures.  We did have light rain most of the day, but not enough to ruin plans.  It was just enough to be a nuisance.  The walk to Hill Top is a little over 3 miles, with a lot of gorgeous scenery and tiny villages along the way.  

Once we got down to the lake, we had to take a ferry across to the other side.   

Looking at Lake Windermere from Bowness

 It was fitting that on the way to Beatrix Potter's home we were greeted by Mama Swan and her babies as we walked off the ferry.

   Claife Heights Viewing Station, built in 1790

 Looking across the lake at Bowness.

The rest of the walk was just beautiful.  

Author Beatrix Potter visited the Lake District with her family as a child a moved there as an adult.  Hilltop was only her home for a short while as she met her husband shortly after moving and moved in with him.  However, she kept Hilltop as her writing sanctuary.  It was the inspiration for several of her stories.  The home is now a museum set up with mostly her original furniture as well as memorabilia - letters, sketches, notebooks, etc. 

It was so special to see the gardens as I could picture the little animals from the stories up to their shenanigans.  

The small village of Near Sawrey also inspired Potter.

Notice the tupperware container to leave your money.  

The rain started to come down harder after our visit to Hill Top so we took the bus to our next destination - Hawkshead.  Beatrix Potter's husband was a lawyer in Hawkshead and his offices were left to the National Trust and turned into a Beatrix Potter Gallery.  The gallery changes its exhibit regularly.  During our visit, the exhibit showed Potter's artwork from her stories and the Lake District's inspiration, then and now.  It was fun to see what some of the places we had visited looked like back in the day as well as how she portrayed them in her books.  It was a lovely little gallery.

Letters and picture of the Pottery Family in the Lake District.

 Some examples of the exhibition.

I really liked the villages with the clean white paint, black trim and ALL THOSE FLOWERS!

 The Hawkshead Grammar School where William Wordsworth once attended is now a museum.

Part of the grammar school in the front while the St. Michael and All Angels' Church in the background.

After another long, wet day we took the bus back to Bowness, had some dinner across the street from our cottage and turned in for the night.  The next day we checked out and boarded the train at noon to head back to London.  The next day I said goodbye to the UK and flew home.  The end!

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The End

With just a few days before I leave for Iceland, I figured it was time to finish sharing my SUMMER trip to Scotland/England.  Where I last left off, we packed up and left Scotland behind.  But the trip wasn't quite over.  We boarded the train in Edinburgh and headed south to the Lake District of England (Cumbria), Bowness-on-Windermere to be exact.  We rented a little cottage for our time there, and it was so cute.

After being in a hotel room for the week, it was nice to have some room to spread out AND a washer and dryer to freshen our clothes.  

We arrived late afternoon and spent the evening just wandering around our new town, trying to get our bearings.  Windermere is a more well-known and populated area which was just north of us.  Bowness is a bit smaller and sits right on the lake of Windermere.  

Bowness-on-Windermere was exactly how you'd expect a little English village to be.  Quaint little shops lined narrow streets, flowers adorned most of the windows and walkways, and the architecture was all very "English". 

We had been watching the weather reports for a few days about our time in England.  The forecast looked like the ones we had seen in Scotland.  Rain showers predicted each day.  However, while in Scotland the rain was mostly during times we weren't out sight seeing, we weren't quite so lucky in England.  The day we arrived it was partly cloudy, but that was the last time we'd see the sun on our trip.  We didn't have a car because we had planned on taking advantages of the many walks and hikes the district offers, so that threw a little wrench in our plans when we woke up on day 2 to pouring rain.  

After a little research (and a lot of grumbling about the rain), we had our plan.  We boarded the bus  which stopped at the end of our street and took it to the main bus station in Windermere where we bought an all day ticket.  From there we headed northwest to Keswick to visit the Derwent Pencil Museum.  Now, most people giggle when I share this story, but I have to tell you it was FASCINATING.  What started out as the Cumberland Pencil Company in the 1800s is now the Derwent Cumberland Pencil Company who makes school and art pencils.  We use Ticonderoga pencils at school, but in the art world Derwent pencils are very well known and of very good quality.  I have a few sets of my own, both colored and water color versions.  It was fun to see how they were originally made and how they are made now.  Their history is also very interesting as they have played roles in many of the historical events that have taken place over the last two centuries, including helping the Royal Air Force in World War II by making secret map and compass pencils.  It has to be in my top 5 museum experiences.  

The James Bond of Pencils

There were numerous commemorative pencil sets on the display which were just beautiful.

This series of pencils was used primarily in schools as a reward system.  Students could earn them and wanted to collect the different colors.

 The largest colored pencil in the world!

 William and Kate commemorative set

 A portrait commissioned by Derwent to commemorate the Queen's Diamond Jubilee.  Only Derwent pencils were used.

 At the end of the exhibits were a few tables set up with pencils, watercolor pencils, and art paper in case one was inspired after their visit.  We were!

 The actual factory has since moved to another town, but this is what remains of the one that was on site.

  It was midday by the time we traveled to and finished our visit.  We hopped back on the bus and headed back south, stopping in Ambleside on the way.  Ambleside sits across Lake Windermere from where we were staying.  Another cute little English village.  So charming!

 One thing that was kind of disappointing about our time in Cumbria (other than the rain) was that since it was still June, the summer tourism season in the area had not hit full speed.  That was a good thing in that the crowds (and kids) were minimal, but that also meant the summer hours weren't on yet.  Most shops and museums closed at 5.  We didn't get to Ambleside until around 4 so only had a bit of time to explore before the town shut down.  And when we got back to Bowness it was almost 7.  Other than pubs/restaurants, everything was closed for the night.  So after returning to Bowness, we wrapped up our first full day at a fun pub.

 I had one of my favorite meals of the trip there.  It was a steak and ale "pie" with all the trimmings.  Delish!

We walked our waterlogged selves back home after the pub, watched a movie, and headed to bed.  Even though a lot of it was spent on a bus, our first full day was busy.

The Answer

So in the last post, I mentioned my distaste for testing and part of the reason for that is questions like this...

This type of question is used to assess students' decoding skills which is their understanding of phonics and the sounds letters make.  Decoding is used when reading new words.  This type of question is challenging in itself because while students are reading actual text there are so many skills that are going on at the same time when they read.  Think about when you read yourself.  If you happen upon a word that is new to you, you draw from a variety of skills, almost instantly, in order to figure it out.  All at the same time you will decode/sound it out, think about how it's used in context as well as if there are any context clues to give you hints, and pull from your personal dictionary you carry in your brain of words you know.  That's what good readers do.  So to isolate that decoding skill is very hard.  We do A LOT of teaching to the test practice with this type of question because it is an unnatural way of decoding.  So while the type of question is tricky, the first two parts are manageable and do not bother me (beyond my issue above).
It's the third part that gets me.  The word "perform" uses a fairly basic phonics skill of what we call the R-controlled vowel.  The R that comes after the O keeps the O from being long (phone) or short (hop).  Instead the sound the two make together says "or" like the word.  So let's look at the answer choices...
- far - has an R-controlled A so that sound obviously doesn't match
- sharp - same as above
- tour - the vowel team "ou" can have four sounds.  So, technically tour could be said like TORE and be the correct answer.

BUT, if you look the word tour up in the dictionary, there are only two pronunciations given.

- motor - ends in or and should technically say "or" but it doesn't.  Instead it says "er".  When you look that up, there are no variations in the sound.  HOWEVER, in Spanish it is pronounced mow-TOR, emphasizing the OR sound.  This is a test in English of course, BUT 90% of the students in my class come from Spanish speaking homes, so that is an issue.

So what is the answer?!?!  It is TOUR.
After all of this research (for one freaking question) trying to figure out why the heck the answer is tour, I brought it to a colleague of mine.  She said that in Idaho and Utah (where she is from) they do pronounce it closer to TORE.  In California, we pronounce it as to-er.  So even, if there's a possibility it could follow the phonics rule of #2, the dictionary doesn't show it AND it's not something we hear regionally.  And then to add in that many of my kids do hear motor as mow-TOR at home...how are they supposed to answer this!?!?!
I know the test makers like to make the kids "think" by putting words that have the same sound but different spelling, but maybe they could have used oar, boar, or warn which are much more clear about their sound.
It's questions like this that make me question whether the tests can indicate anything like student achievement or teacher effectiveness.
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Testing

Now that I'm in a grade level again that participates in end-of-year-state testing (sobs), it's about that time of year where the utter absurdity of it all comes into play, and I have to blog about it.  For most of my career I have taught in 2nd grade, and for the first 15 years of it we had end-of-year state testing called STAR which was a standardized test in California.  We spent A LOT of time preparing, or as I like to call it "teaching to the test".  I found it was ridiculous how much time we spent preparing rather than just teaching and how much pressure was put on us to do well.  However, it was mostly a developmentally appropriate test.  When things shifted to Common Core, second grade no longer tested.  That's not to say we didn't test a million other times throughout the year, but we didn't have to do the the high-stakes testing at the end of the year.  Hooray! It was such a relief to be able to teach what the kids needed to know, not what was on the test.

That Hooray, went wah, wah, wah at the very end of last year when my terribly unqualified principal (who was just recently FIRED by the way) decided I needed to be in a grade that tested, so moved me to 3rd grade.  Philosophically, it wasn't the right thing to do for numerous reasons, but it was done and now I'm back in a grade that tests, and I HATE THAT.
I hate that everything we do is about the test.  We have to write this way because of the test.  We have to read these passages because of the test.  We have to teach these test taking skills.  And I will tell you, the new "Common Core" tests are SO HARD that most 8 year olds don't have the wherewithal and the stamina to get through it and do well.  They are not developmentally appropriate.  And it's maddening.  To make matters worse, the fact that the questions can't just be straight forward drives me mad.  I get testing critical thinking when a student is in high school, but my kids are 8 and 9.  If a question is so tricky that a group of 3rd grade teachers who teach the tested subject matter can't figure out the answer then it's not appropriate.

There was a question on our trimester 2 testing last week.  The test was quite difficult, but if a student is able to read at grade level AND has the wherewithal to care enough to answer each question with care, he or she would do ok.  But this question, or more specifically the answer choices, wasn't a good question.  Take a look...

This is a three part question where students had to identify sound/spelling patterns.  Based on the underlined part of the word in each sentence (mostly a complex vowel sound), students are asked to choose the word that has the same SOUND.  That means that just because the part of the word has the same spelling doesn't mean it has the same sound.  It's English after all!  It's a common question in 2nd and 3rd grade to assess decoding skills, which in itself is lame because decoding skills are used for READING not answering test questions.  But I digress.  The issue with this question is the 3rd part.  Try to answer that question using your phonics knowledge and see what you come up.  After, feel free to consult a dictionary - it didn't help us any.  I'll be back in a day or to with the answer.