Along with exams comes invigilation. Last year, I started teaching right before Cambridge exams began in November. I listened as teachers bemoaned the duty of invigilating these exams with, I thought, over-exaggerated consternation and drama. Honestly, all you’re doing is supervising a bunch of girls while they write an exam. How terrible could that be? Well, having been inducted into my first round of public exam invigilating and well into my second, let me tell, it can be pretty darn terrible.
Cambridge is, as I imagine many other examining boards are, very strict on how invigilation must be done. An invigilator may not do anything else other than invigilate. This consists of walking (you are not really meant to stop moving) around the room watching attentively for cheating students (and supplying extra paper, tissue paper, string to tie papers together, picking up dropped writing utensils). Not difficult. No. But do you know how unbelievably boring walking around watching people write, racing other teachers to get to the raised hand, with nothing to do, for anywhere from 40 to 120 minutes, is? Well, let me enlighten you: it is awfully painful. You scoff? Believe it. I never knew doing nothing could be so painful (I knew there was a reason I avoided all those "Silent Retreats" at Calvin!).
So, in an effort to survive the eternity of walking in a daze around the room (who expects us to see cheaters after an exhausting hour of nothingness?) like zombies, you come up with some interesting ideas.
String braiding with the little pieces of string for tying papers together
Origami stars – made with thin strips of smuggled in paper
Statistics – work out what percentage of Maths candidates have two or more calculators
Races – first invigilator to find a certain number or word
Bets – with fellow zombie guess which month has more candidates born in it, count them up (based on students’ statement of entries on their desks) and see who wins
String hide and seek (our latest favourite) – spend the time hiding little bits of string (very surreptitiously) around the room, next invigilator has to find them
Jess, a friend and fellow zombie-walker, created a Facebook support group called “People Against Invigilation: PAIN”.
Ideas of ways to fill spaces of nothingness welcome.
haha oh beks. love it. first of all i just learned the word "invigilate" and all its derivatives haha. thank you.
ReplyDeleteAnother game you could play would be to see who has a student for each letter of the alphabet by first name (obviously you might not have A-Z but the most out of 26?)...just a thought.