Issue link: http://educator.cta.org/i/1509126
Strategies for Test Prep Interactive practices can help students show what they know By Meghan Hargrave A S T E A C H E R S , we sometimes see a discrepancy between the skills that students demonstrate during daily instruction and their transfer to different contexts like standardized testing. It can be tempting to try to help students bridge this gap by asking test-like questions on homework assignments, using a multiple-choice unit test, or offering constructed-re- sponse questions throughout the year. Although these approaches can be helpful, they are more about practice than preparation. To instead imple- ment practical strategies and simple teaching moves throughout the curriculum, the following strategies offer a wraparound approach. They also create consistency that helps students demonstrate learning, increase confidence, and feel more successful in their ability to demonstrate knowledge in new context. Academic graffiti walls We've all seen student-facing materials (rubrics, test questions) that include academic language not typically used in day-to-day teaching. Helping students access and understand these words is essential to their success. If students can think flexibly — replacing an unfamiliar word with one that they are more comfortable with, for example — they will better understand what they are being asked to do. Start by creating an interactive academic vocabulary graffiti wall — a word wall that groups together terms that mean the same thing. Put a word theme on the wall — for example, central idea — and invite students, throughout the year, to add words that share that theme's meaning (for central idea, synonyms might be message, lesson learned, or mostly about). The graffiti wall serves as a reference tool, but its cen- tral purpose is to prepare students to think flexibly about language. Its presence promotes students' ability to parse the meaning of unfamiliar academic vocabulary by relat- ing new information to prior knowledge — a critical skill across contexts. In-the-moment multiple choice questions Multiple choice questions are often presented in two ways: a question set with one very obvious answer, or a set with more than one accurate answer that requires students to decide between two or more decent options. The latter includes questions containing phrases like "which answer most" or "which answer best," requiring learners to rank before selecting. To prepare students for these question sets, write multiple choice questions with possible answers created by the students. When read- ing aloud or solving a group problem, pose a question and ask each student to write down their answer on a sticky note or small piece of paper. Grab answers, at random, from three to five students: These will serve as your multiple choice possibilities. Once you've collected several possible answers, invite the rest of the class to work together to rank/sort the options. Ask them which answer best fits the question, or which has the stron- gest evidence, and why. To get creative with this activity, you can also ask stu- dents to make a case for which incorrect answer is the best, and why (perhaps it is the most creative or closest to the "These strategies create authentic opportunities for students to practice critical thinking, deductive reasoning and engage in argument from evidence." 50 cta.org Teaching & Learning