2. Practice Makes You Worse

2 Practice Makes... You Worse The next day, Mr. Cooper came running into the class, all excited. Mr. Cooper thinks he's a superhero, and he wears a cape. What's up with that? "We have five days to get ready for the F.A.R.T.," he announced. "We're not going to let Dr. Carbles shut down Ella

Mentry School, are we, kids?" "No!" shouted all the girls. "Yes!" shouted all the boys. "We're gonna fight for our school!" said Mr. Cooper. "Isn't that right, kids?" "Yes!" shouted all the girls. "No!" shouted all the boys. There were some basic disagreements about education between the boys and the girls. "You kids are going to crush the F.A.R.T.!" yelled Mr. Cooper. "CRUSH... THE... F.A.R.T.!" Ryan chanted as he stood up. "CRUSH... THE... F.A.R.T.!" We all jumped up and started chanting "CRUSH THE F.A.R.T.!" Chanting is cool. You should chant stuff whenever you can. That's the first rule of being a kid.

Mr. Cooper lowered his voice to a whisper, like he was going to tell us a big secret. "I'm going to tell you a big secret," he whispered. "Oooh, I love secrets!" said Alexia. "I went on the internet," said Mr. Cooper, "and I downloaded a practice F.A.R.T. This will help to prepare you for the real F.A.R.T." "I love practice tests!" said Andrea, who loves any kind of test, because it gives her the chance to show everybody how smart she is. "Me too," said Emily, of course.

What is their problem? I hate all tests, real or practice.

Andrea waved her hand in the air like she was washing a big window with a sponge. "Yes, Andrea?" asked Mr. Cooper. "Is the F.A.R.T. a multiple-choice test?" she asked. Ugh. I hate multiple-choice tests. A multiple-choice test is a test that has more than one choice for the answers, so it has the perfect name. They give you the right answer. It's staring you in the face. But they also throw in a bunch of wrong answers so you don't know which answer is the right one. That's mean! It would be a lot easier if multiple-choice tests only gave you one choice.* "No, Andrea," said Mr. Cooper. "It's not multiple-choice. The F.A.R.T. is a fill-in-the-blanks test." Oh, good! Filling in blanks is a lot

easier. You can write anything you want. Mr. Cooper told us to take out our number two pencils. We all started giggling because Mr. Cooper said "number two." Anytime a grown-up says "number two," you should giggle. Because we all know what number two means, and it has nothing to do with pencils. "I'm going to pass out—" Mr. Cooper said. "He's going to pass out!" shouted Ryan. "Call an ambulance!" shouted Michael. "I'm going to pass out the practice tests," said Mr. Cooper. "Oh," said Ryan and Michael. "This will be just like a real F.A.R.T.," Mr. Cooper explained as he