Wednesday, May 5, 2010

Spring is over, bring on Summer

The final grades for the spring semester are available online today, so the spring 2010 semester is officially over!

In my week off between spring and summer semesters, I got out my Florida Teacher Certification Exam (FTCE) prep books (thanks, Lindsey!) and began looking through them. I need to take (and pass) three exams (General Knowledge, Professional Education, and Educational Media Specialist) this summer in order to apply for a spring 2011 internship.

One of the courses I just finished, LIS5512 - Collection Development in a School Media Center, supposedly prepared me for the Educational Media Specialist exam, so that's the one I'm planning to take first. I registered to take the exam on Friday, 5/28, so I've only got a couple of weeks to finish studying. I need to get at least a 70% on it to pass. That's like a D+ or a C, and I got an A in the class, so I hope that means I'll have no problems passing. That's assuming the content of the class is what's on the test though, and I haven't gotten very far in the exam prep book yet.

I also registered for all four parts of the General Knowledge exam for Saturday, June 12. I do need to review for it, but I'm not as worried about this exam, as I am about the other two. It does have an essay though, and the essay portion takes longer to be scored than the rest of the exams, so I figured I should get this one out of the way early in the summer to be safe. This exam has four parts: Essay, Reading, English Language Skills, and Math. Each part has a different required percentage to pass. For Reading, you only need 65%, English Language Skills - 73%, and Math, only 58% (and yet for some reason this is the longest section at 100 minutes). For the essay, you need 6 out of 12 points, which is basically a 50%.

Although I'm not registered for it yet, the Professional Education exam requires 73% to pass.

Next week the summer semester begins. Tuition is paid, books are bought, and I'm ready to start.

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