It's that time of year!
The end of January in our school district marks the beginning of the official testing window. Whether we like it or not, our kids will spend valuable hours navigating through state-mandated standardized reading and math tests here in Oregon.
While the purpose of assessment in the classroom is to figure out what students know and to direct our teaching, our approach to preparing students for standardized tests is necessarily different than typical assessments. The following strategies can help you and your students prepare and navigate the standardized testing window.
Involve Parents...and Food
Successful testing involves elements that are not limited to the testing time itself, including adequate (and extra) sleep during the testing window as well as regular, healthy meals and snacks. Before the testing window begins, start sending information home for parents regarding the state tests and dates that your students will be participating. Encourage parents to put these dates on their calendars and send their children to bed early on those nights.
It can be difficult to ensure that your students are fed well regardless of the testing window. When sending information home to parents, ask if there are any volunteers who could send in all-natural and healthy snacks for kids to eat as they take breaks during testing times. Ask for snacks that are high in protein, such as cheese sticks, nuts and dried fruit, or all-natural granola bars (TLC and Kashi have great options). Another option is to ask for ingredients to make a special classroom "testing trail mix," like Goldfish crackers, roasted almonds, dried fruit, and small pretzel twists among others. Mix and pass out in cups or small bowls during breaks between testing to keep everyone well-fueled!
Practice, Practice, Practice
Standardized tests are as much about test-taking skills as they are about information. Just like learning to read a map, kids need to build skills that help them navigate state tests. Some of theses test-taking skills include:
- Read questions carefully (and more than once)
- Cross out answers that you know are not correct
- Review questions before starting a reading passage
- Read the passage more than once
- Highlight answers in the reading passage while answering the questions
- Work out math answers using all available tools (i.e. manipulatives, pencil and paper, calculators)
- Check math answers
- Skip questions and come back to them later
- Take your time!
As assessment is part of what drives classroom instruction, these test-taking strategies can be taught throughout the year. However, it's important to approach these skills with your students as you would subject-oriented curriculum in order to establish a strong foundation with your kids.
Review Essential Skills
While personally not a proponent of "teaching to the test," I do appreciate the value of reviewing those essential grade-level skills that I know are going to appear. For example, mean, median and mode seem to be on every test in the history of earth, regardless of grade or age level.
To save time and energy, combine the review of this kind of information with teaching valuable test-taking skills. Incorporate this information into homework packets that can be completed and reviewed with parents, and practice these skills and pieces of information a little each day to keep your students sharp and ready for the testing window. This preparation will help everyone in your classroom feel confident and do their best no matter the test!
It doesn't matter if you're in elementary school or college, it's important to know how to write an essay. As a fourth-grade teacher with state writing tests looming each spring, I have taught kids the general and finer points of constructing a basic essay. This guest post reveals helpful tips for kids of all ages when faced with a writing prompt, from brainstorming to final draft!
For many people, writing an essay can be a daunting task. Oftentimes, the essay is part of a grade for a class or affects whether or not you're accepted into a school where you desire to study. The following are 10 ways to write better essays:
- Read and reread the essay's instructions. A major part of writing a better essay is understanding the topic and essay requirements. Don't simply read the first sentence or two and assume you understand the requirements.
- List out the requirements in a checklist. One way to write better essays is to use the essay requirements as a checklist that you can grade yourself against when you are finished.
- Use the essay requirements as a writing outline. The best essays cover every single point noted in the requirements. Take those points and use them as the outline for your essay, and be sure you discuss them in both your introduction and conclusion.
- Remember what an essay is and isn't. An essay is usually an opinion-based form of writing. Although you should state facts to support your opinions, it is not simply a regurgitation of facts. The best essays take facts and use them to support opinions.
- Read other essays. One of the best ways to write better essays is to read essays that others have written. This helps expose you to different writing styles and tones that you can adapt to your own writing.
- Check your formatting. Chances are your essays have some sort of formatting guide that you need to follow. Make a good essay even better by ensuring you conform to these guidelines.
- Double-check your vocabulary. Although you want to impress the reader with your wordsmithing prowess, be sure to double-check the meaning behind words you are less familiar with before you use them. For example, there is a significant difference between the words tantamount and paramount, yet people use them interchangeably.
- Don’t rush. Schedule time to write your essay, so that you’re not scrambling at the last minute to get it done. The best essays are thoughtfully written, and waiting until the eleventh hour to start is counterproductive to thoughtful writing.
- Proofread your essay. If you want to write a better essay, edit the one you’ve just written. Even the best piece of writing can be tweaked just a little to make it even better. Ask a friend to proofread it as well, to catch any mistakes you may have missed.
- Think outside the box. If you want to take your essay writing from good to great, approach the topic with a different slant. Don’t just go for the obvious response to an essay question; instead, aim to highlight your critical thinking skills.
Being a student wasn't easy when Randall Davidson, a co-founder of ProofreadingServices.Us, was a student and it's not easy now either. To support dedicated and driven students in their pursuit of great writing skills, Randall Davidson's company offers ESL proofreading and essay proofreading services.
Celebrate the crisp, cold winter snow with this fun math lesson plan for younger kids. These three snow-themed math activities are simple to plan and fit in with any winter-based classroom units.
Snowball Math Materials
For these three math activities, gather together the following materials:
- dark or light blue construction paper, cut into 8 1/2" x 11" pieces
- cotton balls
- miniature marshmallows
- two large jars
- white crayons
- white stamping ink
Money-Saving Tip: Have you noticed how large cotton balls have become lately? Save some money and have a parent volunteer cut your stash of cotton balls in half to make them go farther.
Snowball Addition or Subtraction
This math project helps children create groups of snowballs to show simple addition and subtraction equations. In this case, the snowballs are miniature marshmallows, but the cotton balls can also be used for this math activity.
- Review simple addition and subtraction equations
- Pass out the 8 1/2" x 11" pieces of blue construction paper, one per child, along with a number of miniature marshmallows
- Students glue their marshmallow snowballs onto the paper to show their equations, writing the equation underneath their snowballs
Once completed, these snowball addition and subtraction equations can be hung up as an easy winter-themed bulletin board called Snowball Math!
Snowball Estimation
For this whole-class estimation activity, you'll need the two jars and a bag of cotton balls.
To prepare for this lesson, put 20 cotton balls in one of the jars. In the other jar, put as many cotton balls as you'd like to use for this estimation activity.
Show your kids the first jar and tell them that there are 20 snowballs in it. Then show them the other jar and explain that you have no idea how many snowballs are in that jar. Before you count them together as a class, however, you want everyone to take a good guess.
Discuss with your kids how they could use the first jar to estimate how many snowballs are in the second jar and ask what would make a good guess. Once students have settled on their strategies, go around the room and write down each student's estimation of how many snowballs are in the second jar, making a simple graph on chart paper.
Together with your kids, count the snowballs from the second jar, comparing the final outcome with your students' guesses.
Counting By Fingerprint Snowballs
This is a great activity to reinforce counting and grouping skills. Using the Create a series of snowballs in groups of twos, threes, fours or fives.
Using one 8 1/2" x 11" piece of blue construction paper per child, have them draw three circles on the page using a white crayon (this can also be done beforehand).
Using a stamping pad of white ink (one per group of students), have your kids put a series of thumbprints in each circle - for example:
- instruct students to put groups of two thumbprints in each circle and write the total number of groups of two on the bottom of the page. Change the amount of thumbprints that go in each circle based on the skill level of your kids.
- change the focus of the lesson from counting and grouping to addition or subtraction by instructing your students to create simple equations using their fingerprints in the circles and writing the equation underneath the circles.
- in each circle, have students stamp groups of two, three, and four, one set in each circle. Add circles to the blue paper as needed to expand the counting and grouping exercise.
Another option is to avoid putting the circles on the page to begin with, and simply having kids stamp fingerprints in groups beginning with the number one through the number ten, writing the corresponding number under each set of fingerprints.
Regardless of how you use this math lesson plan with your students, don't forget that the results can be used as an easy and cute bulletin board in your classroom or out in the hallway to help everyone celebrate the winter months!
Earlier this month, I took both of my boys to their new classrooms on the first day at our local elementary school. My oldest is nine years old and attends a fourth grade class run by a Miss Y. Here's a picture of his desk that first morning:
My youngest is six, and his first grade teacher is Mr. W. Here's a picture of his desk on that same morning:
Later, looking through the First Day of School pictures, my husband commented on the difference that I had noticed first off that morning. My husband is a teacher, too - he asked if I thought the differences illustrated by these two photos were par for the course or isolated incidents. I'm not sure.
All I know for sure is that Noah - the first grader - is a live wire, and I can't think of a better teacher for him, especially considering his adventures last year in kindergarten. Aaron could take lessons from an inanimate potato and still learn something because that's the kind of learner he is. In any case, I thought these pictures were funny ~
What do you think?
You may be introducing the idea of New Year's resolutions with your students, but what about you? Take a few minutes for inspiration with these five suggestions.
Help kids stay academically connected with fun practice and review activities to complete over Christmas break.
This fun math game for learning centers will help your young students connect numbers with their value as well as begin to work on addition skills. A free printable is included!
This slideshow was my first attempt at putting one together, and I created one based on the myths of Christmas. Check them out!
A Pajama Day is a fun and meaningful way to acknowledge your kids' hard work. Here are helpful tips to make the most of this celebration!
This Butterfly Project Lesson Plan is actually a valuable social studies lesson about children and the Holocaust, where kids can honor the innocent children who perished.
