NJASK5

This year I am going to be taking the NJASK5. If you ask me, NJASK is the WORST thing anyone’s ever invented. Why do only a couple of states have to take this exam? Why does it have to have so many questions? Why does everyone put such big stress on it, even though it doesn’t really matter for your grades? Unfortunately, I don’t know the answers to all those questions. In 3rd grade, NJASK prep was like a huge bullet to me. In 3rd grade our teacher was FREAKING out because of the NJASK. It was our first time taking the teat and we had no idea what was going to be on the test. By what we heard of 2 years ago by the people who had already taken the state test, the test was SUPER hard. The math questions always used to trick you and the language arts passages always had big hard confusing words and had boring topics-like oil changing. I was scared for the NJASK. When our teacher was handing us thee test, I was shaking all over. No one knew what was on that test, and I would only get to see it one time before our 30 minutes were up and I had to give the test back. I got the first passage. The teacher was saying something but all I could hear was “On the test blah blah blah try to blah blah blah you have 30 minutes blah blah blah good luck.” My eyes froze opened wide. I carefully flipped the page to the test. It was a fiction story. I let myself have a little smile. I had also heard of this story before. I quickly finished reading the passage, carefully spending time to think about the words in bold. Then I flipped to the multiple choice questions. It was challenging. For almost every question, there was almost 2 possible answers. 1 was wrong, but it was hard to tell which one that was. I spent my time on each question, carefully coloring the bubble for which one I believed was right. Then came one question. I was totally blank. I couldn’t even make an inferrance. I closed my eyes and did eenie-meenie-mynie-mo between which letter I should choose. It wasn’t the best option but even though I guessed there was a 25% chance I got the question right. I picked letter B. After really thinking for a few moments whether I should choose a different answer, I realized time was ticking and there was only 15 minutes left. Fast, I thought. For the rest of the multiple choice I chose with what went with my gut.
I finally got to the open ended response question. The question was very easy. Carefully printing my answer in my not-very-usual-neat-handwriting I made my word choice and used everything I had learned to write the best response ever written by a third grader. “5 minutes left boys and girls. You should blah blah” The second I heard the word “5” handwriting didn’t matter anymore. I unleashed my ugly handwriting, still keeping in mind to keep my handwriting tamed. Finally my teacher said “Put down your pencils!” That was a relief. I was officially OVER with NJASK. That wasn’t so bad. It was actually easy. We went outside the rest f the day, and NJASK didn’t seem that bad . . . not untill 5th grade. dun dun dun (suspenseful music)

Sneha Kandalgaonkar