Monday, February 10, 2014

THE ONET IS OVER!


For the past few months, our sixth grade students have been working extra hard to prepare themselves for the ONET. The ONET is a Thailand standardized test that is taken in grade 6, M-3, and M-6. The test has nine subjects and each subject has 25 multi-part questions. The craziest part, the whole thing is done in one day! It blows my mind that at the age of 11/12 you are expected to take a test for seven hours straight. Regardless the students worked so hard, and I am so proud of them!

                        

To celebrate the grade six students a few teachers, a few volunteers, and myself went out to a local restaurant in Kapong. The restaurant is a buffet of raw meat, vegetables, and noodles. At your table you have a little barbecue where you cook your dinner right in front of you. As always when you go to a buffet your eyes are bigger than your stomach, everything looks so good and then when it comes down to it, whoops. Well in Thailand it works a little bit different than at home. Riley, Insa, and I had noticed that after we had finished some of the teachers began finishing the food we were to full for. At this point we had just assumed they were EXTRA hungry. As it turns out, this was not the case. Apparently on top of the flat rate to eat at the buffet, any food that you leave on your plate you can be charged for! Picking up on the fact that wasted food was not in the budget, what did we do? Oh we began eating cold spring rolls, and leftover fried rice. It was quite comical, everyone was cracking up about the fact we would be walking out of the restaurant with triplet food babies. What can I say, lesson learned.


After a wonderful (and filling) dinner, the students set of a lantern for good luck. It was the perfect end to the evening. I am so proud of these kids, they have been working so hard to prepare for this test. Come mid-March when the results come back, I hope they remember that as long as the did their best... I am one happy teacher :)